Notting Trent University & Fujitsu Collaborate to Improve Wellbeing

Today (31 Oct) Fujitsu has signed a Strategic Relationship Agreement with Nottingham Trent University (NTU) to collaborate and explore opportunities to provide a framework for developing a long-term partnership.

Leveraging Fujitsu’s ecosystem approach aimed at making a positive impact to people and wider society through strategic partnerships, the agreement will significantly and positively address some of the issues and challenges customers, employees and students face, through a number of wellbeing and safety projects.

To drive this, NTU and Fujitsu will collaborate in three key areas: 

1. Research and development (R&D): NTU and Fujitsu will actively identify R&D opportunities such as jointly pursuing innovative projects and seeking associated funding opportunitues focused on generating new products, processes and services, which benefit customers, employees and students. 
2. Partnership: focused on collaborative business planning and strategic engagement, the agreement facilitates identifying common priorities and campaigns for continued partnership.    
3. Skills and employability: the partnership will deliver on a number of areas around teaching and learning, work experience and employment. Examples include shaping and developing education curriculum and helping to identify student projects, live briefs and wider examples of teaching materials to be used by students.

A specific co-creation project already underway between Fujitsu and NTU to help address some of the key issues and challenges customers face is BuddyConnect .

A simple mobile app solution, BuddyConnect is focused on helping employees plan and manage the mental health challenges autism may present in the workplace.

As apps built specifically for tackling autism in the workplace are much rarer, this app puts in place an effective support and guidance infrastructure through easy-to-access information and by connecting those with autism with additional support.

The joint collaboration research and development supports the application being deployed to workers and students.

“It’s a pleasure to welcome Fujitsu as a strategic partner. This is an exciting agreement which will allow both parties to collaborate on research, teaching and learning activities that will make a positive impact on many of the global challenges of today,” said Professor Edward Peck, Vice-Chancellor of Nottingham Trent University.

“Improving people’s health and wellbeing, and providing our students with the best opportunities possible to excel in modern society, is part of Nottingham Trent University’s ethos. By working with Fujitsu, we will be able to drive forward the kinds of innovation and thinking required to address such complex challenges and help shape the future of our society.”

Fujitsu’s agreement with NTU aims to open up wider collaboration with other partners, such as further education colleges, universities, industry, expert and SME (small and medium enterprises) partners, who share their values and are eager to collaborate to make positive change across the globe.

“Technology is transforming Britain and the wider world and has the potential to bring enormous benefits to our society. However, the pace of this change has left many organisations and individuals struggling to grapple with what a digital future means for them. Our Ecosystem approach recognises the outcomes, combined value and positive benefits we can bring to the society by working with partners, academia and customers,” said Andy Seferta, Head of Ecosystem and Analyst Engagement, Digital Technology Services, Fujitsu EMEIA.

“We believe digital co-creation offers the fastest and most effective route to encouraging more organisations and individuals to foster meaningful social impact. And our work with universities such as Nottingham Trent University, along with start-ups and other experts and industry partners is a prime example of how industry and academia can work together to benefit a wide range of people, including customers, employees and students.” 

The agreement follows the opening of Fujitsu’s second Europe based Digital Transformation Centre  (DTC) in London. Part of the Fujitsu Co-creating Program , a distinctive approach to helping customers accelerate digital transformation, the new DTC is a purpose built space that uses digital content and tools and  empowers organisations of all kinds to think about the future of their businesses and develop concepts that accelerate their digital transformation. The issues and challenges that the Strategic Relationship Agreement looks to address are complimentary to those explored at the new DTC.

About Nottingham Trent University: The university is passionate about creating opportunities  and its extensive outreach programme is designed to enable Nottingham Trent to be a vehicle for social mobility. NTU is the sixth biggest recruiter of students from disadvantaged backgrounds in the country and 95.6% of its graduates go on to employment on further education within six months of leaving. NTU is home to world-class research, winning The Queen’s Anniversary Prize  in 2015 – the highest national honour for a UK university. It recognised the University’s pioneering projects to improve weapons and explosives detection in luggage, enable safer production of powdered infant formula and combat food fraud.

What’s more, Nottingham Trent University (NTU) was named University of the Year 2017  at the Times Higher Education Awards and Modern University of the Year  in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018. The award recognises NTU for its strong student satisfaction, quality of teaching, overall student experience and engagement with employers. Nottingham Trent University (NTU) has been awarded the highest, gold, rating in the Government’s Teaching Excellence Framework  for its outstanding teaching and learning.

About Fujitsu: The leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Approximately 140,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu employs over 14,000 people in the UK & Ireland, with total revenues exceeding £1.8 billion. Offering an integrated product and service portfolio, we deliver consulting, applications, technology products, systems integration and managed services, including cloud-based solutions, for customers across both public and private sectors, including retail, financial services, telecoms, government, defense and consumer IT.