Design for Health and Wellbeing
The Health and Wellbeing group builds collaborative partnerships for developing research that informs the evidence base for practice and improves health and wellbeing.
Our group seeks to address the changing needs of medical research and society, including:
- social factors and health (prevention, intervention, individual, and collective well-being)
- medical device development and additive manufacturing processes
- health management and communication of health including telemedicine
- biomaterials including dental, cardiovascular, ophthalmics and orthopaedics.
Existing research focuses on the development of medical devices and the use of new and innovative smart technologies and materials. Current projects include:
- development of responsive ocular prosthetics
- patient stroke rehabilitation systems
- cricothyrotomy devices
- manufacture of artificial muscles and personal physical activity and inactivity monitoring (quantified self).
Our group leads innovative research linked to the combined use of Computer Aided Design (CAD) printing systems and layer manufacturing techniques to produce medical devices which have a uniform composition.
We already have established links with the Nottingham University Hospital and Medilink (East Midlands). The group also has active involvement with the Biomaterials Special interest group as part of Biomat-IN, which is a collaboration of five European clusters working to foster innovation in the area of biomaterials through transnational cooperation.
The group is looking to generate research income through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), NIHR i4i fund, EPSRC, the Stroke association, Wellcome Trust and European Framework Programme Seven and other European Commission initiatives.
