^{Professor Andy Hardy, Chief Executive at UHCW NHS Trust and Professor John Latham CBE, Vice-Chancellor of Coventry University Group. Photo provided by Coventry University.} 

Coventry University aims to help the NHS tackle health inequalities in the city centre by becoming the UK's first higher education institution co-located in an NHS Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC).

The university plans to deliver teaching, learning, clinical placements, and research, enterprise and innovation at the new health centre alongside University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust.

Coventry University said it will provide the opportunity to increase their capacity to educate the workforce of the future, giving students and researchers the ability to make a real-world impact on patients and practice.  

The centre is expected to see about 90,000 patients annually and provide up to 75,000 additional patient tests a year by 2026.

It will target heart and lung problems and focus on expanding the city's capacity for diagnosing cancers, due to high rates of premature mortality from those health issues in the Coventry area.  

Development of the centre is ongoing and should open in early 2025.  

Professor Andy Hardy, chief executive at UHCW NHS Trust, said they are "committed to being rooted in our communities and offering more services for the people of Coventry in a convenient city centre location, reducing the need to travel to University Hospital, Coventry."

He added: “The centre will help to achieve earlier diagnoses for patients through easier, faster and more direct access to the full range of diagnostic tests needed to understand patients’ symptoms.

"The services offered will also be separate to urgent diagnostic scan facilities, which means shorter waiting times and a reduced risk of cancellation."