What changed?
The Impacts and Benefits
Impacts for the Company
Visibility Scotland has always been an innovative charity, but we lacked the personnel and expertise to develop some of our ideas and turn them into usable products and services.
Thanks to the KTP project, we were able to secure an Associate with experience in this type of work who could work full time on this project. We also had the pleasure to count on the expertise of academics from the University of Strathclyde who have provided continuous and excellent input into the project.
Moreover, as a charity, we usually lack the financial freedom to pursue this type of research and development projects. Thanks to the KTP, we have been able to do this project at a fraction of the cost.
Currently, the project has already produced outputs that will transform how we deliver our services: the new technologies will improve our service delivery and will continue to improve the life of our service users. Furthermore, we expect that the technology developed in the KTP will produce a new stream of income that will support and expand the operations of Visibility Scotland and will lead to additional employment opportunities.
Impacts for the Academic Team
For the academic team, impacts have touched upon multiple aspects.
The KTP has allowed activating students projects and validation studies, which will ultimately lead to publication and, most importantly, to active contribution to patient benefit, which ranks highly in academic performance evaluation both at institutional and personal level.
The collaboration between academic and corporate partner started by the KTP shows promise to evolve into a much broader initiative, encompassing aspects of provision of professional education, institutional teaching, and continuous professional development.
Finally, the KTP has seeded a longer-term research relationship, nurtured both by the academic and the corporate partners, and further grant applications are being pursued from the main academic funders, to scale the technological and clinical activity to broader impact and to encompass selected members of the respective stakeholder networks, possibly extending to international collaboration.
Impacts for the KTP Associate
Working in Visibility Scotland, I have learnt so much about vision impairment and the challenges people with it face on their day-to-day. I have been able to witness the work they do and even participate in some of the services to improve the lives of people with vision impairment.
I’m guiding a product development process with everything that it entails, from product design to commercialisation. It is hard work, but also very enlightening and I’m having the opportunity to learn and lead a complex and challenging project. Thanks to his, I have been able to hone my skills on project management, business strategy, and leadership, as well as in other technical aspects.
Furthermore, during this project, I had the opportunity to co-supervise a student project stemming from the research of the KTP, which has further improved my leadership and managerial skills.
The budget specifically associated to development has been a very nice perk of the project, which has allowed me to take courses to develop my own career-oriented interests, such as innovation and AI.