Hi-tech healthcare boost for Exeter after over £1 million cash injection
The University of Exeter has received financial backing from the LEAP Digital Health Hub to fund several exciting healthcare projects.
The Hub has awarded funding of over one million pounds to 15 collaborative digital health research projects and fellowships across the South West and Wales in December 2024, leveraging over £410,000 in additional funding from partner organisations.
Dr Anna Price from the University of Exeter Medical School will lead a project focused on young people with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in partnership with Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust and NHS Devon Integrated Care Board. They’re aiming to reduce inequalities in access to healthcare through the use of an AI-powered virtual assistant to increase engagement with the CareADHD app. Dr Price’s team will be co-developing the technology with young people.
Dr Genevieve Williams, also from the Medical School, will lead an extensive partnership formed at the Hub’s Frailty, fall prediction and fall prevention sandpit. Dr Williams’ team includes University of Bristol, University of Plymouth, University of Bath, Bristol Health Partners and JockeyCam. Their project will explore the use of video and inertial measurement units for detecting falls and the activities preceding them.
Dr Samantha Van Beurden from the Medical School will lead a project to improve D:REACH-HF, the digital version of the REACH-HF which is currently used in the NHS and offers a home-based alternative to traditional, hospital-based cardiac rehabilitation. The project aims to improve D:REACH-HF by making it easier to use and more suitable for patients from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The team will focus on enhancing support for older patients and their caregivers, and ensuring the platform better assists health professionals in delivering the programme.
Dr Alison Harper from the University of Exeter Business School is leading a project using a computational method to model complex queuing systems at two NHS sites – South West Ambulatory Orthopaedic Centre (SWAOC) and Royal Devon University Hospital. They’ll combine two methods of to create a robust simulation and provide a bespoke user-interface for their NHS partners, enabling experimentation with the model. They will investigate reusability of hybrid model components for wider NHS planning.
Dr Ben Owusu from the University of Exeter Medical School and his team have obtained a national database of one million people with heart problems that brings together data from primary care, hospital, accident & emergency, and outpatients, without identifying patients. They want to use these data to develop and test prediction risk models for falls and fracture and understand how this risk might vary with different levels of health severity, and by gender, socio-economic status and ethnicity.
Over the year since the Hub’s launch in October 2023, LEAP has co-produced a distinct digital health research strategy at the intersection between the health needs of the region and the specific research and innovation strengths of our partnership network.
The Hub’s call for collaborative research proposals invited applications in four thematic areas derived from this strategy:
- Care outside of the hospital
- Service and resource planning
- Frailty, fall prediction and fall prevention
- Smartphone and wearable technologies
Project partnerships span across the Hub’s region with leadership from LEAP’s five university partners (University of Bristol, University of Bath, Cardiff University, University of Exeter and University of the West of England). Partners include regional NHS trusts and boards, voluntary and community interest organisations, digital health technology companies and other academic institutions.
LEAP is an EPSRC-funded Digital Health Hub that aims to cultivate a multidisciplinary, entrepreneurial, cross-sector Digital Health community in South West England and Wales. The Hub is providing opportunities for training, research and collaboration through three core programmes and a wide partnership network.
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