As the summer break draws to a close, I wanted to take the opportunity to look back at some of the fantastic events the Healthcare Technologies network (HTN) has been involved in this session.

The year began with our Healthcare Technologies Student and Early Career Awards in February 2015, this time working in collaboration with the IMechE’s Biomedical Engineering Association (BmEA). The quality of entries was excellent, as were the presentations, and I’m very pleased to announce that the winners of the IET Awards will be presenting at our Annual Healthcare Lecture in November.

In May 2015 we collaborated with the Royal Society of Medicine to produce the very successful one day seminar discussing the topic of ‘The future of medicine – the role of the doctor in 2025’. I’m delighted to say that we received such positive feedback from those who attended that we are planning to hold the event again this session so please keep visiting our MyCommunity page for more information on this.

In more recent news, the network was pleased to support the IEEE Engineering in Medicine Biology Conference (EMBC), one of the largest biomedical engineering events in the world. The network sponsored a mini-symposium consisting of a set of international speakers entitled “mHealth review: Cross-disciplinary technologies, deployments and future trends”.

Our 2014-2015 session will finish with our highly-anticipated Machine Learning in Healthcare event in September at Balliol College, Oxford. This one day seminar will comprise of lectures from key international researchers who will also be contributing to a corresponding book of the same name to be published by the IET in 2016. Spaces are limited to I invite you all to register your interest as soon as possible.

The next session begins on the 1 October 2015 and the HTN committee and IET staff have worked incredibly hard on developing an exciting program. Over the course of 12 months you will see recurring collaborations with the IMechE, RSM and MIT's CriticalData programme. We also welcome the return of our Annual Healthcare Lecture which takes place in the newly-reopened Savoy Place in November.

In addition to our repeat events, we are excited to announce new activities taking place this year. Pizza with industry will allow students to interact with healthcare industry representatives to discuss career options, jobs and other mutual areas of interest. And Evening Seminar for Start Ups in Healthcare will offer a unique opportunity to hear insights and advice from expert speakers on how to take a med-tech start up from idea to reality.

As ever, the committee and I, as well as our team of tireless IET staff, look forward to meeting you at one of these events. In the meantime, keep up to date with the HTN via www.theiet.org/health-tech or via Twitter @IETHealthTech.

Dr Peter Bannister CEng

Chairman