Supervisor View Full Details

• bioengineering/medical devices

• Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine

• Clinical Trials
• Endocrinology
• Health Informatics

Dr. O'Halloran is director of the Translational Medical Device Lab within the newly established Lambe Translational Research Facility at NUI Galway. Opened in 2015, the facility is an ideal location for medical device development, being a fully-functional engineering lab embedded within a large regional hospital. This give the lab team access to both clinical expertise and to patients. The lab is co-located with the Health Research Board?s Clinical Research Facility (CRF), which is currently running over 100 active clinical trials involving over 2000 patients. Having this facility co-located with the medical device lab is a great asset in terms of medical device translation.
On a broader level, NUI Galway is host to ?CURAM?, Science Foundation Ireland?s ?50 million centre for medical device development. Through CURAM?s ?Spokes? programme, the centre works with national and international medtech companies on innovative biomaterials and devices. NUI Galway is also host to the BioInnovate Programme, a sister programme of Stanford?s BioDesign programme. This reflects NUI Galway?s particular focus on medical devices.

The Translational Medical Device Lab is focused on medical device development that is "close to patient and close to market". The lab specialises in "needs-driven" technology development, whereby before any technical development, the clinical need, market size, regulatory pathway, and predicate devices are all carefully examined. This ensures that any device developed within the lab has a very real chance of making a tangible impact on patient care, the healthcare service, and the Irish medtech sector.

Current areas of interest include lost cost medical imaging, RF and microwave ablation and implantable medical devices.