On the 8th of June 2022, the inaugural IAB meeting was conducted  in person to discuss both the Centre progress to date and future directions.

The IAB is an independent advisory group established to provide objective expert advice and recommendations to the EC with regards to the Centre’s performance, strategic direction, research priorities and partnerships. Membership comprises of invited academic, clinical and industry experts in the field of orthopaedics, biomedical engineering, and medical technologies. Board Members are invited and appointed by the EC and Centre Director and are selected based on their experience within a key stakeholder group of the Centre and for their demonstrated ability to provide sound guidance on the research and general activities of the Centre.

The role of the Advisory Board is to review the Centre’s performance and make recommendations that assist with the achievement of the Centre’s strategic goals and in setting future strategic direction, including beyond the lifetime of the Centre. The Board is advised by the Centre Director and EC on strategy and progress. 

The output of the Board meeting included recommendations and key questions across several aspects of the Centre including: 

*Training & Employability of Centre Members 

*Centre Culture & Cohesiveness 

*Diversity of Stakeholder Engagement & Interactions 

*Performance Measures, and 

*Future Outlook

The output also included an overview of identified strengths, weaknesses, key opportunities, and potential threats of the Centre for the EC to review and consider. In conjunction with the outputs of the EC strategic planning day (April 2022), the IAB recommendations and summary have informed the creation of a Centre-funded Seed Grant program which is being piloted in 2022-2023. This strategically-funded initiative aims to directly foster collaboration between the early-career team members (HDRs and post-docs) and our industry partners to identify clinically-relevant research gaps and apply for funding to lead a 12 month multidisciplinary project. Training and development activities are incorporated into the application process to guide early-career team members through the grant application and project management processes.  

Overall at the centre, we are grateful to have a diverse range of clinical, academic, industry, and engagement experts, who will help steer our Centre to higher performance, plan for our next stages and network with our researchers with Prof. Karen Reynalds, Prof David Sonnabend, Dr Dimity Dornan AO, and Mr Peter Cooke. We know that the future direction of the centre is in safe hands with our leading experts on board.

For further information on their backgrounds, please refer to our website here.