Professor Dewar Finlay’s Inaugural Professorial Lecture - From Analog Signals to AI insights: The evolution of computerised ECG analysis
On 20th February 2025 Professor Dewar Finlay, Co-Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training In diGital heAlth techoloGiEs (ENGAGE) presented his inaugural professorial lecture to an audience of leading academics, researchers, industry representatives, healthcare professionals, friends and family.
Dewar was promoted to Professor in 2017, so this lecture was a long time coming. He presented a fascinating research journey into the evolution of electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis, it’s background and potential future path to improving diagnostics in cardiac medicine. Dewar brings his wealth of knowledge and experience in healthcare technology and specifically his world leading knowledge of ECG analysis, to the ENGAGE CDT and our students benefit from having such ground breaking research to work with and be inspired by.
Many of Dewar’s previous PhD Researchers attended the lecture, now with diverse careers born out of their PhD research; company founders, researchers, academics and experts in their own fields. Dewar hopes to continue to inspire, educate and support the next generation of innovators and researchers in Digital Health Technologies through his work with the CDT.
The event included a welcome and introduction by Professor Colin Turner, Pro Vice Chancellor & Executive Dean of Faculty of Computing, Engineering & the Built Environment and a Vote of Thanks delivered by Professor Liam Maguire, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Research. Both of Ulster University.
‘I’ve known Dewar Finlay for over 20 years. Dewar and myself are in the same Research area and we’ve jointly published over many years..my area is medical devices, his is very much the software approach and therefore we’ve worked successfully together at developing not just the Academic side of it but some of the commercial side of Digital Healthcare Technology here at Ulster University'.’
Professor Jim Mclaughlin, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Co-Investigator of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training In diGital heAlth techoloGiEs (ENGAGE)
‘Well, I feel very privileged to be here, being able to do this work, I feel privileged to work at the University of Ulster and it’s really nice to see some of the previous candidates who studied for PhD’s here this evening coming along, how they’ve moved on through their academic careers, their industrial careers and I think that’s one of the nice things about this evening. I’m interested in the technical side of things, ECG analysis and bio-signal processing is a very technical subject and it looks as if there’s plenty of mileage ahead.’
Professor Dewar Finlay, Professor of Electronic systems and Co-Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training In diGital heAlth techoloGiEs (ENGAGE)
