Jointly run by Informing Healthcare and the School of Medicine at Swansea University, the Health Informatics Research Laboratories is underpinned by evaluation, research and innovation to support real patient benefits to the NHS in Wales and beyond through the delivery of healthcare IT innovations centred on the patient.  Officially opened by Welsh Assembly Minister for Health and Social Care, Edwina Hart, in June 2008, the Health Informatics Research Laboratories is designed to form “NHS in a lab” – a safe and accessible research facility to study the patient’s journey through the NHS by integrating new and existing IT systems.

Major functions of the Health Informatics Research Laboratories include:

• Simulation of various real-world healthcare settings to fit project purposes, so that existing healthcare information technologies can be tested and evaluated (singly and in combination) for issues such as for safety, usability and interoperability. 
• Provision of a prototyping capacity, so that where the commercial market place cannot provide a solution to an identified need, a variety of potential solutions can be quickly created and assessed. 
• Conduction of collaborative research and development, leading to innovation and new marketable products and services. 
• Provision of a training environment in a variety of traditional academic disciplines, so that they can become skilled and experienced health informatics professionals through working within the Health Informatics Research Laboratories. 

View and download the Health Informatics Research Laboratories interactive e-brochure

www.healthinformaticsresearchlabs.swansea.ac.uk