Projects

Increasing numbers of people are living with dementia and as the disease progresses, many people find it difficult to form new relationships and experience depression. The project aims to ameliorate the situation through face-to-face and online workshops in which storyboards promote communication and build relationships while reducing loneliness and depression. Participants will have opportunities to talk about personal memories and they will negotiate with other workshop members to produce a group-authored story to take away.

HomeCare an AI, voice-enabled smart home assistant solution that assists older people in everyday tasks and helps them combat social isolation and loneliness by connecting family, friends, and support services together.

The team at aiKNIT are inventing cutting edge material technology, to design programmable wearable devices that can change their material characteristics such as stiffness and elasticity, to support a patients recovery from musculoskeletal disorders. The programmable material characteristics will fit the patient’s anatomical and physiological needs in a highly personalised fashion to facilitate faster and more effective healing.

Increasing numbers of people are living with dementia and as the disease progresses, many people find it difficult to form new relationships and experience depression. The project aims to ameliorate the situation through face-to-face and online workshops in which storyboards promote communication and build relationships while reducing loneliness and depression. Participants will have opportunities to talk about personal memories and they will negotiate with other workshop members to produce a group-authored story to take away.

Helping people at a stage of life most at risk of osteoporosis preserve their bone strength, is key for helping individuals stay fracture-free for as long as possible. This project aims to assess the potential to transform research regarding the benefits of bone-specific activity into a long-term population level intervention to help preserve bone health in mature adults and those living with osteoporosis.

Dementia can significantly impact the lives of people who have a diagnosis, including stigma, social isolation and a lack of meaningful connection to their community. Bold (Bringing out Leaders in Dementia) is an innovative Social Leadership project that has provided opportunities for people living with dementia to take the lead in creating positive social change in their communities.

Social isolation, loneliness and stigma are some of the most detrimental psychosocial effects of living with and supporting someone with Lewy Body Disease (LBD). Peer mentorship between newly diagnosed people with LBD and more experienced people with LBD has the potential to reap extremely positive effects for both parties, and their care partners. This social enterprise will co-develop a peer mentorship program with people with LBD, to be delivered over video-conference technology.

A new kind of scalable digitally enabled home care service to support people to remain socially connected, independent and active for longer, using gamification machine learning and automation.

This project involves people living with dementia, carers and counsellors in the creation of a tiered counselling package. The package will aim to tackle stigma around dementia in the public services, communities, and businesses, and allow the individual to choose where they access support. Addressing the gap in counselling provision for people living with dementia and their carers, the project develops an accessible service model that can significantly improve the mental health of those affected by the condition.

Identifying scalable and sustainable design improvements to homes that provide support for healthy cognitive ageing, allowing people to continue living in their homes for longer.

We will develop a digital anticipatory care tool (ACT) to positively impact dementia patients by reducing clinical interventions, hospital admissions, and enhancing their quality of life. As a non-pharmaceutical ‘first line’, our digital tools will enable caregivers with a tool to fulfill better outcomes such as improved cognition, confidence, mood and relationships

Developing the Personal Alarm Watch from an emergency support solution to one which predicts and prevents health problems using machine learning.

This project is developing a motor neurone disease (MND) oral health care pathway and toolkit providing 1) resources for MND patients, carers and dental professionals to better understand the challenges associated with MND, 2) guidance supporting self-care and carers to maintain good oral health for MND patients, 3) pathway to access dental care with a self-referral process 4) develop a series of hands-free toothbrushes.

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease, characterised by cartilage loss, for which there is no cure. This project aims to develop an App to track and monitor additional information about joint trauma patients during their recovery. This resource would be invaluable to the scientific community, clinicians and the pharmaceutic industry to provide better healthcare early on and enable healthy ageing.

Bioadaptive (circadian) lighting has a myriad of well-documented health benefits. This project aims to develop an ‘in-home’ remote bioadaptive lighting solution to bring the healthy benefits of circadian lights, whilst enhancing on best-in-class by integrating sensing technologies to determine disease progression and/or abnormal behaviour.

Helping older people with cognitive impairment to be more active, independent and socially connected, experiencing a good quality of life through nature-based outdoor activities.

From our fifties onwards, people experience increasing cognitive problems. Without support, this affects day-to-day life, activity and wellbeing, so identifying these problems in older adults early is crucial to providing support.

Understanding and addressing the difficulties people with hearing loss experience in a variety of noisy and distracting places and how these affect attention, cognition, wellbeing and social interaction.

Combining innovations in behavioural science and adaptive AI to develop a digital coaching service to support older adults to establish and maintain healthy, active, daily habits, at home and in their community. Helping improve both mental and physical health.

I-Can-Do is developing digital accessibility for the dementia volunteer service. This project focuses on older people with a recent diagnosis of dementia. It seeks to support people in building their confidence and staying active and socially connected, which can help promote physical and cognitive health and wellbeing, and thus quality of life.

Working with Equal Arts, the IDEAL project helps artists and social enterprises to run interventions and activities for people living with dementia (PwD). In the form of workshops, these activities offer a creative outlet for PwD thus encouraging increased agency and sense of social identity. The project investigates new workshop activities and settings, and effective ways for managing engagement. This will lead to a new training service with materials, and an online programme.