Centre for Smart Health

The Centre for Smart Health aims to create healthcare innovations with technology, making positive impacts on practice and the quality of care. We conduct cross-disciplinary applied research that capitalises on our expertise in technology, including virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and translates the results into practice to improve healthcare education, diagnosis and treatment.

Gerontological Nursing Laboratory

The Gerontological Nursing Laboratory (GNL), located in A107, opened in September 2014. It provides a simulated environment in which students can experience age-related changes, assess the physical and psychosocial health of older people and practise skills in gerontological nursing. The laboratory allows students to gain deeper understandings of the care needs of older people and their caregivers that will facilitate better care planning and quality care provision. The laboratory also serves as a venue for conducting research activities, where questionnaires and interviews will be conducted, and interventions will be delivered.

Squina International Centre for Infection Control

The Squina International Centre for Infection Control (CIC) is a specialist centre hosted by the School of Nursing, tasked to lead by promoting excellence in the practice of infection prevention and control through training, research and community education. Members are actively involved in research areas including hand hygiene, personal protective equipment, antibiotic resistant pathogens, influenza vaccination and the use of ultraviolet-C irradiation for environmental decontamination to inactivate multi-drug resistant organisms. Research collaborations with other disciplines, including engineering, biomedical, optometry, textiles and clothing, are carried out as appropriate. Research findings are frequently published in reputable and high impact academic journals.

WHO Collaborating Centre for Community Health Services (WHO CC)

The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated the School of Nursing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University as a WHO Collaborating Centre for Community Health Services since December 2007. This is the first and only WHO collaborating centre on ‘Ageing’ in Asia and the Pacific, assisting the Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) to roll out its strategic initiatives on ageing for the region. Through implementing the WHO's mandate, the School has been playing a proactive role in strengthening evidence-based community health services and improving the health outcomes of local, regional and global populations. As the focus of WHO CC is “Healthy Ageing”, collaborative research studies in connection with the WHO ‘Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE) model have been developed with academics, practitioners and government units in different countries in Western Pacific Region This redesignated WHO CC unit on ‘Healthy Ageing’.

Interdisciplinary Centre for Qualitative Research

The Interdisciplinary Centre for Qualitative Research (ICQR) of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University is the first dedicated interdisciplinary qualitative research centre in Asia. Established in 2021, the ICQR aims to generate and transfer knowledge through qualitative research into the clinical and business setting.  We also believe qualitative research methods are proving increasingly beneficial in exploring and answering those questions that cannot be easily answered by quantitative approaches alone. Indeed, the role of qualitative research allows for a more thorough exploration in examining individual experiences in all their complexity and in the contexts where these experiences take place which can be particularly conductive to policy design and improvement.

Centre for Advancing Patient Health Outcomes: A Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Affiliated Group

The Centre for Advancing Patient Health Outcomes: A JBI Affiliated Group is hosted by the School of Nursing at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, a world leader in gerontological, mental health, cancer and palliative care and community health services research. We believe the addition of the JBI group based at PolyU will be integral in developing new research questions to address some of the key health priorities affecting Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area’s population. We also see our JBI group being prominent leaders in developing and advancing cost-effective and improved evidenced based practice. Our focus is not only on knowledge generation and translation but also evidence implementation education through systematic review and continuous professional training in industry.