Projects

A collaboration between Active Lancashire and UCLan to develop a health screening service in the workplace, especially SMEs, via trained gym and leisure centre staff, to support people to make positive lifestyle choices such as exercising more and looking after their mental health.

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.

Conventional treatments of UI (urinary incontinence) are invasive and can have side-effects. When left untreated UI can lead to people avoiding going out, increasing social isolation and reducing physical activity. This project proposes an instrumented sock containing electrodes that stimulate the tibial nerve to control UI. Unlike other nerve-stimulation treatments, the sock doesn’t require surgery or repeated hospital visits making it ideal for larger-scale trials.

A game-play based immersive hearing skills training app to improve personal confidence and hearing capability in social and work environments for people with age related hearing loss.

Bia is an app that helps to keep women in midlife healthy, happy and productive in the workplace. It is co-designed by women, for women. It distils the essential, evidence-based components of exercise that are essential for the health of women in midlife. It provides a clear, motivating, structured programme to follow and is underpinned by exercise and behavioural science.

This project brings together research around health support for older works with health data collection and modelling technology to develop an innovative intervention which will help individuals better understand the ways in which their health, work and wider lives interact, and will build on this understanding to offer a tool to help them more effectively navigate their health needs at work.

Menopause is a natural part of women’s ageing but can present physical and psychological symptoms that may persist for several years. These are often experienced with little support. Common symptoms include hot flashes, sleep problems, and low mood. Problems with memory and concentration in particular can make working life challenging. This project tackles memory and concentration problems by investigating the potential value of treatments using rosemary extracts, which may alter brain chemistry to help improve memory.

GP practices are the gateway to accessing healthcare, but they are inaccessible to many people who live in deprived neighbourhoods. CHERIE (Community Health Education, scReenIng and prEvention) aims to establish outreach clinics delivered by organisations that are embedded within communities, to provide health education, screen people for risk factors of cardiometabolic diseases, and diagnose and manage them.

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.

Long term vascular ageing presents a challenge to healthy ageing initiatives because its signs often go undetected. This project develops low-cost methods for the monitoring of ‘vascular age’ using wearables similar to fitness bracelets and smart watches, or by designing a prototype device using available components. Further testing with people of different ages with vascular disease, under different conditions, can then establish if low-cost devices can be used for continuous monitoring over longer periods.

Dance to Health, an arts-based exercise programme for the health sector which ‘smuggles’ exercise into local groups and since Covid-19 digitally via Zoom classes and DVD’s for areas with poor broadband.

Dedicate is an AI-powered 24/7 virtual care partner platformthat supports carers to lead more empowered lives through round the clock trustworthy advice and guidance on care related questions for the person they care for and themselves. We empower carers and those they care for to have better informed and healthier lives through expert, personalised guidance on care-related tasks and challenges of daily living presented by a virtual assistant (VA).

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 develops a knee device to support and monitor rehabilitation of individuals suffering from knee osteoarthritis. Users will wear the device during exercises and daily activities with the device providing muscle support to the individual but also real-time feedback on their progress to clinicians. This information will help to find the best treatment during rehabilitation, leading to better patient outcomes.

Malnutrition (or insufficient nutrient intake) is a significant issue for older people in the UK, and is strongly associated with poorer quality of life, functional decline and deteriorating health. Over 35% of people in care homes are affected by malnutrition with risk increasing the longer someone lives in care with it taking as little as 2 days to become malnourished. This project will develop a tool to identify malnutrition and its risk through taking photographs to identify nutritional intake.

Delivering a Mobile Occupational Therapy Assessment so that the right equipment can be provided to prevent falls and improve functional ability, helping to achieve a better quality of life and wellbeing as people age.

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.

Older adults with hearing loss often find it hard to follow group conversations in social contexts, especially when there is loud background noise and reverberation. Not being able to engage leads many people to opt out all together, which can have devastating consequences for mental health and increases the risk of dementia. This project will prototype solutions that can detect when conversations are becoming difficult to follow and help the group to keep everyone engaged.

About 60% of UK stroke survivors are aged ≥65 years and have lower limb weakness with reduced mobility.