Increased demand for Electronic Engineering Graduates Expected Researchers from NUI Galway are part of a national group awarded just under €4m by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) for the development of mobile healthcare technology. The group will develop technology to assist clinicians with more effective remote monitoring of out-patients in their own homes.

Drivers for the technology include an ageing population, increasing pressure on centralised healthcare facilities and the need to reduce the number of in-patients. Many such applications involve the generation and analysis of large quantities of biological signals for each patient, driving the need for sophisticated electronic signal processing techniques. A key focus of the research will be efficient operation for longer life in mobile devices.

The research group, entitled "Efficient Embedded Digital Signal Processing for Mobile Digital Health" (EEDSP), is led by University College Cork, and in addition to NUI Galway, includes academic researchers from University of Limerick and University College Dublin, as well as a number of industry partners.

According to Dr. Edward Jones, Lecturer in Electronic Engineering and leader of the NUI Galway team, "This grant from SFI will help the EEDSP group to advance the state of the art in this area of increasing importance to society. At the same time, a steady supply of graduates will be required to meet the needs of the rapidly growing digital healthcare industry.

Dr. Jones added, "Electronic Engineering offers a tremendous range of possible careers over a wide range of sectors that are critical to society. Some of these might not immediately spring to mind to leaving cert students, including this relatively new and rapidly growing area of digital and mobile healthcare".

NUI Galway is holding its annual Open Day on Thursday, 29 November, and those interested in electronics as a career should drop by the Electronic Engineering stand at this event to find out more.

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