Innovation centre to be launched in Northern Ireland

A new innovation centre is to be launched in Northern Ireland.

Enterprise minister Jonathan Bell announced that the latest government-backed Digital Catapult Centre will be located at the Northern Ireland Science Parks in Belfast and Londonderry.

Data sharing

The Digital Catapult Centre is a national centre that was first launched in London in 2014. Funded by Innovate UK, the Digital Catapult Centre focuses on “developing breakthroughs for the UK’s data sharing movement.”

According to Bell, the centre will help to “showcase” Northern Ireland’s tech capacity in areas such as analytics, cybersecurity, and advanced sensors.

The Digital Catapult focuses on sharing closed data with organisations, “accelerating the safe links between data innovators, start-ups, scale-ups and data challenge owners across all sectors to deliver new shared innovation and productivity.”

Opportunity

Commenting on the long-term partnership with the Digital Catapult, Bell said that it will “provide businesses with the opportunity to collaborate to solve key problems and develop new products and services by sharing data in a much better way”.

He added that he was “delighted” to announce that Northern Ireland is now formally part of the Digital Catapult Network.

Digital Catapult CEO Neil Crockett said: “The wealth of experience and expertise within Northern Ireland is a valuable asset to our network and we look forward to building a range of relationships both locally and across the UK.”