EPSRC Funding opportunity: Technologies to enable independence for people living with dementia

great and then we can kick off so I'm really delighted to welcome everyone to this webinar uh we're really excited to introduce on new call on um Technologies to enable Independence for people living with dementia and we're delighted to be joined um by colleagues from Alzheimer society and um the National Institute for Health and Care research who um we are partnering with on this call um I'm Katherine Freeman a senior portfolio manager from the engineering physical sciences research Council and and I work in the healthcare Technologies team and I'm just going to share my screen because we've got a couple of slides just to start with um and then a few presentations and welcome everyone today really delighted to see how many people are interested in our new funding opportunity so I will hopefully everyone can see my screen looks good brilliant thank you so just um to give everyone a quick overview of um what we're going to cover today uh so following this uh short introduction um we will hear from Alzheimer Society um and some colleagues and um people who have lived experience um to really give us an overview of the topic and why this topic is a really important area that we really need some new uh research thinking in then um myself and my colleague Sophie uh from nhr will give a summary of the funding opportunity the scope and the details and then we'll have a presentation from a current Network plus grant holder who will give some insights into how they found uh running a network plus and finally we will have a chance for everyone to ask questions um and that will be uh towards the end of the webinar and we will share the recording and the webinar uh the questions afterwards as well with everyone who's registered um so just a final thing tonight if everyone can there's a Q&A um button that you can press and zoom if you can all capture questions in there during the webinar that would be brilliant and that's what we're using to um ask the questions so I'm going to hand over to my colleague uh Katherine gray who is the head of research at the alimer society and I'll stop sharing my slides as well um so we can see everyone there we go thank you thank you Katherine it's a pleasure to be with you all today on a very rainy day where I am um so yes we're here to sort of help set the scene um a little bit and hopefully inspire you as you build your applications over the coming weeks so you know we're only going to end the devastation caused by Dementia by working in new ways and collaborating and that's why outs Society is really excited to be partnering on this call with the epsrc and nrr so there are an estimated 1 million people living with dementia today and that number is set to rise to 1.4 Million by 2040 and we know it's so important to people living with dementia to be able to live independently with fulfilled lives and to be able to do things that they enjoy for as long as possible um and we also know that from experts by experience that existing products for people living with Mena can often focus on safeguarding and monitoring and risk mitigation which of course are vitally important as we sort of build a different future for people with dementia but I think we also forget there's also about enabling and empowering people living with dementia to keep doing the things that they love and that they're important to them and that bring joy um so I hope to um inspire you all with this session um and I will introduce you now to the wonderful Jennifer but and Paul Harvey who are members of our lived experience groups and we also joined by by Carl Quinn who um is from the Alzheimer's Society Innovation team so we're going to have a bit of a discussion now and hope to sort of yeah set some sparks flying in your brains as you you build your applications so Jennifer should we start with your experience can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you use technology now yes um in 2009 my father had demena well I've lived in dimensional inclusive communities I used to be a GP involved in medical education I'm AI because we all want to remain independent and we don't like it when we lose our independence and as our condition progresses we find inly difficult I was involved with longal prize over the last two years we allowed to talk about that um but I do know a little bit about things um now I live in a community which has independent assisted living nursing care and others with dementia and those with Advanced dementia and those with just old age but we all want to continue with some form of Independence I use Alexa oh help I should have turned her off to remind me to take my medication twice a day she plays music I just have to tell her a bit of one of the songs and she just knows it's wonderful well that kind of Vining can show to by oh yes she knows what that is it's wonderful and more important for me she reads me my books because I can't um read books easily anymore I've got notes Here you probably gather that unless I know what it's saying but she knows which book I'm reading because I hav a clue which one I'm listening to at the moment but she knows and she knows where it is it's wonderful the the Alzheimer Society in Amazon did produce an app for lecture about taking our medication which included not only instructions to take it but where you actually kept your medication to check that you were doing it and it all seemed very good but it fell apart and I don't know why so that might be interesting to people because maybe it wasn't marketed properly I don't know it was a free app so why it didn't take off I have no idea but taking one's medications a Minefield so I have reminders on Alexa on my watch on my landline phone the lot because it is so so easy to forget but I also have an iPhone and an Apple Watch given to me last Christmas I said I didn't want one um because well I don't need these Posh things do I but my son said you'll never be able to live without it and he's absolutely right it tells me for example when money goes in and out of my account which is so much easier than logging on logging on to your bank is impossible you forget how to do it um they do have voice recognition which does help but it's a it's a nightmare so this has solved a lot of those intermediary steps so why can't we have more apps that get rid of all these stupid intermediary steps it also tells me about my exercise or lack of and prods me to do it which is so good but in a lovely kind of way you know they if you do a little bit oh well done you know that bit they're so encouraging it's just brilliant um and it tells me to stand up if I've been sitting down for too long in a very nice way again so you can have out such a nice to as well as just turning you up and my children live abroad and they can know exactly where I am and you see that's important because one day because I get lost I fell over and hurt myself and I couldn't get up was no good phoning someone to say I'm I'm in trouble nobody knew where I was but now on this thing they can actually at the exact street where I am and that is so so important I think um and then of course I can get phone calls on my watch if I go out I don't need to worry that I haven't got my landline with me it's absolutely brilliant but I forget directions and this is something which is surely people would help I'll just tell you a little story I went to Windsor you've probably heard Windsor Castle um wherever you are and I thought I'd go and visit Windsor Castle meet some people there so the arrangement was to meet in the castle so I got a coach nonstop stops at the Castle I was told but when I got off the coach where was the castle I couldn't see a castle anywhere so I asked the driver I said well where's the castle oh it's easy he says you go right left turn left and here you go right well I said I can't remember any of that have you got a map no have you got it written down no so what was I to do that's useless so all I could do was to say to someone which direction is the castle over there and then don't tell me anymore I'll set off there when I got to there and couldn't go any further in a straight line I asked someone else and then I asked someone else and I asked someone else I it's ridiculous isn't it there must be an easier way of finding common places surely surely and then I don't know who people are I mean I went to a family funeral two weeks ago I mean they're all family for goodness sake I mean know who my husband was sometimes Ian he just laughed that's the best way of treating me I mean my sister brought her phone came to see me and left her phone here and when she went outside the door said oh I've left my phone behind so I went in to get it and 30 seconds later I went outside there's a strange lady standing outside my door didn't know who she was so I was about to walk past her with a phone and she said you going to give me that phone no I'm not it's my sister's I'm looking for my sister oh you stupid idiot so what you do when you don't know who people are and they all get upset about it I mean you can get apps on your whatever to tell you what flowers are can't you there must be some kind of app to tell you all these people are surely and what else have I got down here other situations which we need help we can't ask for it is we forget how to communicate when we're speaking in word salads we don't speak gobbledygook we speak word salads we just take the wrong word off the shelf in the brain for example I said to my daughter that the Horseshoes were out well she has done psychology and she knows her mom and all the rest of it and she said Oh you mean the fox gloves they're wonderful but you see horses and foxes are in the same part of the brain and shoes and gloves are in another part of the brain aren't they so when we talk rubbish it is not rubbish we're trying to communicate we're just taking the wrong words of the shelf so to speak so we need something to help us with all that and then we can lose things I mean I got eye TI I'm sure you know about ey tiles you know they're from Apple you put them in your glasses you put them with your what you put them with your credit cards and all the rest but you need your iPad to be able to locate them and can I remember how to use the iPad to find these wretched things no I can't you see there's intermediary stages people assume that we can do the intermediary stages and we can't and isn't there's some wonderful app I just I was on some conference a little while ago and it it um summarized what everyone was saying in a very short amount I can't remember what it was called so I thought this is brilliant let me get hold of this thing and then I'll be able to know what's going on in all these conferences but could I join no I could not join there were too many steps it was too complicated and I'm not that D well I know I am but now and then spending money I'm almost there um you can sign up for apps but it has to be on each outlet you know if you want to buy something you buy 10 you know dozen tins of baked beans you know as for example I mean we'll tell you that you've done that but suppose you try another shop well that's no good is it it needs to be further back than that and as I just said I can't remember my passwords but on my computer I have an automatic thing to tell me what they are but the bank don't worry about that they don't ask me security questions they just get me to talk and that's good enough why can't we have more apps that just use our voices please and my last thing is don't think that old people can't cope covid was wonderful it got us used to zoom and where I was before I did lots of groups to try and keep people with um dementia um stimulated and I ran Perry groups and memory groups and of course during covid we were all locked up it was appalling I don't live there anymore so was I going to give up no I wasn't and I knew the staff had lots of iPads that they never used so I persuaded them the staff did like me I said please can you take this iPad around to so and so and I'll send you the zoom and if you can just set her up on that and then we can talk to each other and have a little bit of group So eventually I persuaded more and more people and in the end we ran our groups didn't we and they were all over 80 and some were 90 so it is not true that older people can learn that's all I have to say thank you so much Jennifer and I think just an amazing summary of how much you're already embracing the technology that's available to you and and and that we're not starting from scratch and it's how you enhance and connect some of these things together to make it even easier um thank you um we're going to move to Paul now hi Paul good morning good morning would you like to start just briefly just telling us a little bit about yourself and why you're here today yeah morning everyone my name's Paul Harvey I was uh diagnosed at the age of 48 with Lou body dementia with parans um currently 54 n I've been living for six years volunteer a lot with the outside Society in many different forms um and the reason I'm here today is because it's very important like Jennifer said about our independence living independently and also for my wife as well that she can go out and have a life leave me at home um technology would be brilliant to help with things like that thank you and could you just tell us a little bit about how you use technology now yeah um like Jennifer I've got a iPad had iPhone uh Apple watch Alexa I love me iPad and the iPhone because I don't have to remember any password I've got face recognition so allows me to access everything I want um but the biggest thing is for me I like cooking still I leave the hob on or the aen on um which got over that the hob with an induction Hobs we got an induction hob that will cut out the other is the Big B Bearer I mean at first the wife you said you know You' left the Haven on and I said to her I said I want to see you keep reminding me I'm not going to remember so it gets a bit embarrassing just go behind me and check and turn it off but it'd be nice to know that there'd be some form of techn could help you with that so like uh like I said wife to come out and visit friends and that lot I'm not have to worry um yeah and we're in that stage of the where we are now technology is everywhere uh you ain't got over complicate you ain't got to reinvent the will you know like Jennifer saying there's apps um I couldn't I wouldn't be a to grasp any new type type of Technology because my brain won't remember new stuff it remembers everything old but nothing new so like my iPhone the iPad I've had them for a long long times there I know how they were so I've already got some form of Technology you just need the new apps to go on it really and I know what we spoke earlier in the week you were also talking about how people experience dementia so differently depending on the different type of dementia that they have and how that needs to be built into technology and into the design process to be able to really benefit people yeah um there's so many different forms of demen this is the complicated part about it uh you'll get your people with uh vascular with words and that not they forget them um so and that got to understand their language as well you know um for me mine's Mobility so there's different aspects You' got PCA don't forget which is an eyesight thing so whenever you design something you've got to bear in mind how many different different forms of dementia you're not going to cover them all no one will but if you could grasp a quite a few of them then that would help a majority of people yeah or or be much more targeted and and and aim for a a particular group of symptoms for a particular type of um dementia to make sure that um you're really addressing the need there um yeah you you couldn't sort like launch an app and say this is just for out people with Alzheimer's you're only targetting one specific DeMent it's only going to help one specific group if you could try and Cate majority of them it could help a wider audience yeah um and is there anything that sort of frustrates you about technology now we heard a few from Jennifer there but have you got anything to add yeah it's when a new act comes out you got to do this step that step it's mindblowing just a simple accept it and then you're in would be brilliant when it gets in and Jaron don't overdo the Jaron don't be technical in language you know a lot of us I was born in London I'm a builder so I'm playing English talk you all right thing you know if you come across with scientific words it unlocks I'm just quit on doing it um and and so and this call is all about building networks and working together in in groups and collaboration like how would you like to be included in the design of new technology I think it's key to have people with dementia involved because obviously that's your target audience um there's so many people out there you know through the outside site you've got an abundance of guinea pigs if you'd like to say um you know who would help with stuff like this um just we've got dementia don't mean that we're silly we still got a lot of our intelligence and everything and uh they would even be able to help you with progressing in what needs to be out there so yeah definitely involve people with dementia lovely thank you Paul have you got anything else to add before we speak to KL well I'd like to say is this is a wonderful thing you're doing and uh on behalf of everyone with dementia thank you for looking at stuff like this thank you Paul and we really really appreciate you and Jennifer's time this morning because I think it's just so important to have your voices here as we we Inspire those to build networks with um that include people with dementia um so Carl we'll move to you now so Carl um is an innovator in The Outsider Society Innovation team um and has worked a lot or alongside a lot of people affected by Dementia in sort of the Innovation and design process so just an opportunity to Carl to share a few Reflections on your experience and if there's anything you'd like to add to Jennifer and Paul's accounts in terms of the benefits of involving people affected by DeMent and design thank you very much um and I'd also just like to to thank Paul and Jennifer for for dite as well um just because I think hopefully it's given a little bit of a flavor that for those on the call wherever you are or whatever idea that you have is that shaping it and framing it in real life and stories is crucial and that is a huge part of codesign and understanding different needs and priorities I think Paul and Jennifer but Paul kind of articulated very well about the difference of needs and different types of challenges that people have and using this umbrella phrase of a dementia doesn't really kind of cut across or tell a story deeply about kind of how the challenges are impacting people on a day-to-day basis um so it's really crucial that you get to understand the problem space first and foremost is really understand what it is that you're trying to do stepping away from statistics or potenti kind of papers that kind of framing it as a percentage actually kind of framing it in the the real lives of people out there with dementia is an absolute crucial step in understanding and framing the problem you're trying to resolve whether it is something that put across different types of of Dementia or whether as you said before Katherine is diving in deep around one particular strand and and kind of challenging um maybe something in depth rather than breadth so really kind of framing that as a list of priorities that you're trying to to address um other huge benefits of of O design is making sure that you are developing things with real usability and relevance to people living with dementia um any design process whether you're working of people in your Dementia or elsewhere um there can be a danger that you follow your own um reant ideas um and get kind of quite consumed by those um and then you you end up kind of maybe reaching towards your minimum viable product or or your kind of proof of concept and actually it's it's not usable it's not relevant to people who you're trying to support so this is really crucial you try to engage as as frequently as possible as early as possible um because then that can also help with your help with your adoption of course when it comes to launch and implementation um because you've had people there throughout who naturally become your Advocates they naturally become your case studies um and know generally um but especially kind of people with dementia if it's already kind of been endorsed by other people living with dementia as it becomes easier for them to buy in that this actually something that is valuable and is useful for them um yeah and and obviously the beauty of working with Alexa Jennifer and Paul and and others that we've done through S Society work is just the she kind of creativity and the challenge that they they kind of provide for you is that it's just wonderful just pushes you into a new D Direction and really kind of enhances that Innovation practice thank you car I was about to ask if you had any sort of hints and tips but I feel like you've covered quite a lot of advice there in terms of um being openminded and how to involve people I don't know if you've got anything else that you'd like to add I'm just conscious of time yeah no I will just just say around kind of inclusion practice and and to be very clear about how you are going to to bring in other voices so quite often through focus groups Etc you might kind of end up talking to the same people over and over again to being very clear about how you are being more representative of the people you're trying to reach and trying to support and help is quite crucial so do think about the different strategies you can deploy and don't think of P design or engagement as one particular method there are multiple methods to deploy and try to build that into your development plan um and where I would would suggest and and hopefully Jennifer and Paul don't don't mind me raising this is is please just be patient like said said Jennifer and Paul and others they get it they understand it and and sometimes you might just need to kind of recover certain things and just go through things at a different place explain things in a different way and you will get there and like say the richness of the the data that you get from from talking and involving people like Jen from PO is just a beautiful thing so um just to reiterate what Paul's doing really excited by potential for this this network um and thank you very much thank you so much Carl Katherine I don't know if we've got any questions for our three panelists if we've got any time for that before we move on yeah I think we can um do a couple a couple of questions um okay um yeah so guys please do use the Q&A um function which you can click at the bottom of the screen to ask questions to our panelists um but we have one here that says apart from the digital tools or skills for example smartphone apps or Alexa are physical devices such as robots expected to help and how in what aspects I don't know who wants to take that one Paul or Jennifer have you got any views on robots Paul's putting his hand up robots no no um that would personally for me that would freak me out having that that in my home I'm you got remember I'm used to my Sur roundings and the people who come and go to have a new thing come in would unsettled me deeply so St robotic plus you got to remember spatial awareness comes into it with dementia um with me when I walk I don't look at the floor I have to look at my surroundings so if I feel claustrophobic and too many people around and tend to put me on the back foot so now for rot s we saw Jennifer looking like she disagreed with you there so I yes I think robots are wonderful now Paul robots don't just look like human beings we can have pets that are robots um we have one here you know it's a cat that youve stroken it Pur you know it's a robot it's not um and it and then there's a dog I'm sure you know the story about the dog you know it was an expensive dog and unfortunately one day it used to also would bark and and if you called it to you it would come up to you and it'd even jump up onto your daap apparently but one day it kind of laid down on the floor and it died and the residents were so upset but of course the batteries have gone and but there are lots of robots and I think the future involves robots Paul but they could be parrots they could be a it could be something on the wall it could be something hanging from the ceiling or something they're not like they're not big like human beings it wouldn't invade your spatial awareness I think in the future we're going to need robots Okay thank you um and we've got one here um which areas of everyday life uh would you say are more important for researchers to focus on Jennifer and Paul Jennifer do you want to go first on that one but just basic living remembering things and who people for me remembering to do things I mean I know I've got Alexa but you get used to her telling you to do something you don't ignore it after a while you know why not have Alexa doesn't do music introductions or if you ask her to do music she'll play your music you don't like and that's not what I'm asking and you know if you ask to do something she says thank you for your feedback it's useless isn't it there's got to be a simpler thing than that to help remind people as well as just words I think and then um I get lost so I need something on that which is everyday stuff isn't it I mean where I am now it's wonderful I don't turn up somewhere someone will come and find me but that's you know I pay for the benefit of living here don't I I live by myself which I want to as long as possible and be dependent but I need this extra help to live independently and I forget to eat and drink you know I don't get hungry and all that kind of stuff so these are little everyday reminders that I need help with but in a nice way please yeah I I agree on that one as well gentle prompts but daily routines like when you get up in the morning to uh have your breakfast then wash and brush your teeth silly things like that we forget um for example to program something to say like to ring my mom or my dad now if I'm busy doing something the wife will say You must ring your mom down I'll say yeah I'll do that after I forget then about 11:00 at night I think oh I've got to ring them obviously I can't because it's too late you know but things like that what helps it's it's s but our our brains are different now they function differently so our memory is it's either you remember something there and then and do it but if you remember and don't do it it'll come back at a later time and it's then it's too late you know some G General prompts and try and work a daily routine out as well for it thank you um do we have time for one more or um maybe one one more and then I think we'll have to move on to the the next bit thank you so Hayden here says how important is it that your family members are educated around the protocol for care and where do they learn from um that's been my biggest bug bed day one of my diagnosis um there's been no help and support for my wife as such for care um NHS really don't involve them on the care side um before we come to the outside sight there was questions she needed she didn't know what she was facing what could happen with me and that lot there was no such help at all so in your technology I would put that quite high up on the list that the you your partners are involved in it that the technology they could put input into it you know add stuff to it um yeah this big high priority for me Jennifer well it's all to do with education isn't it um people don't know I mean my family are brilliant they all live abroad and they that's why they're particularly keen on technology I guess because they can't be be with me and I never phone them ever because of time scales they always contact me because they can remember the time changes more easily than I can but the other thing is um I have one son in particular who's very good at picking up things you know if I say oh days been bad so he says okay what can we do to make sure next time this happens we can do something about it in other words we learn from the bad times and I feel very strongly about education and sharing so I'm not trying to promote anything but I do do a weekly blog um a lot of people know that anyway open to everybody it has thousands of people following it of something that I've learned this week or last week a problem that has come up and how it was dealt with and how it was well dealt with so somebody else could be watching all these things well that's something that we could actually help with with technology does that make sense possibly great thank you so much that's been that's been so useful and I feel like everyone's got so many more questions for you and it was really useful insights but I'm sure perhaps well making sure that you obviously um people have lived experien is really really important to the network so hopefully you can gather sort of valuable feedback and um use sort of networks that Alzheimer's Society have as well um to reach out to people um but yeah thank you again so much that was really useful um to everyone Alim society and Jennifer and Paul as well um I'm going to move on now just aware of time um Jennifer and Paul as well feel free to stay on at the webinar and listen to um the rest of it or also if you need to leave that's that's absolutely fine but yeah thank you so much again right I will just share my screen and Sophie and I have some slides which go into a bit more detail about the particular funding opportunity and the requirements so I will just do full screen um and I'll just I'll try to go through these fairly quickly so we can have a bit more time for questions at the end so um just this slide is just showing where the engineering physical sciences um are like where our interests are within dementia so um we believe that um there's lots of potential for engineering and physical sciences to help people um live healthier lives and that includes all different kinds of conditions and also thinking about well-being in general so that's where our interest um has come in this in this area we have um this slide is showing our Healthcare technology strategy and we have three different um challenges which are highlighted in blue there so thinking about improving population health of people in general thinking about transforming early diagnosis for people and also discover uh discovering and accelerating the development of new interventions and that's where this really uh this call really fits in around enabling Independence for people um and we have around the outside of this diagram we have some cross cutting themes that we think are really important for all of our research to um think about and it should be embedded in all uh research that we support um and a couple of things that have come up to their guess um around sort of patient public involvement engagement making sure that's really Central to the research that we fund and now I'll hand over to Sophie to talk a bit more about the nhr um interest in dementia and then we'll move on to go through the call details and a bit more um information thanks Katherine hi everyone thanks for joining us today I'm Sophie I work at the department Health and Social care um and commission and manage Research into dementia and neurod degeneration through the nhr sorry if I have to take a few drinks uh I've been un well this week so my throat's a little bit tired so sorry if I have to pause for a minute throughout um but yeah just to provide a bit more information on the nhr as a thunder if you aren't as familiar um so the nhr is funding by the Department of Health and Social care and the Cor mission is to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research so as you can see on the slide um the nhr seeks to achieve this through a number of ways one of which is funding high quality timely research that benefits the NHS Public Health and Social care also investing in worldclass expertise facilities and a skilled delivery Workforce to enable us to translate discoveries from Research into treatments and services so that applied research and partnering with patients service users carers and communities to improve the relevance quality and impact of our research so ppi is really important to us um and attracting training and supporting the best researchers as well so we can tackle complex challenges in health and also uh collaborating with other public charity public funders charities and Industry like we're doing on this call uh with the Alzheimer society and epsrc so we can address some of the biggest research challenges with within the system and also we do fund Global health research and training as well to meet the needs of the poorest people in low and middle income countries next slide please thanks Katherine so we thought it'd be helpful just to provide a little bit of information about our pre-existing nihr dementia research activities which are generally split up into three work streams so the first one in the First Column is supporting and enabling dementia research so this is about ensuring that England has all the research infrastructure to support innovation in all areas of dementia so we're able to deliver high quality efficient and Innovative research and also in the second column um we also work quite hard to increase participation in dementia research as well so um some of you may al already be aware that um with Charity Partners like Alzheimer's Society we also fund and deliver uh join mure research um and initiatives like this seek to increase the number of people and also the diversity of people participating in dementia research and this enables us to deliver research which is relevant across a wide range of populations and also speed up the delivery of research as well and finally um we also uh make sure we're delivering research which meets the needs of the Health and Care system so um making sure that the research we're funding is relevant to those people living with dementia and the carers and families uh but also meets the needs of of the current and the Future Health and Social care system next slide please so we just thought it'd be a bit help um it'd be helpful to provide a bit of information about where this joint call came from so um yeah over a year ago now in June 2023 um epsrc and nhr with support and involvement from alhe society as well delivered a workshop which identified opportunities for engineering and physical sciences research inure some of you might some of you on the call might have been involved in that Workshop um and a number of key themes and opportunities for further research were identified during discussions and activities at the workshop but one key area stood out rather strongly um and that was the need to support people liveing with dimension to remain independent in the home for longer so some of the key Reflections from this area included um so the fact that um Alzheimer Society survey showed the 85% of people said they would rather stay at home for longer um after a dementia diagnosis so they want to stay there for as long as possible um and care for people of dementia is equally as important as Di nosis and treatment um and systems and tools developed by research to support people to live well should be designed to address people's needs and not be over comp complicated and should not shift the burden onto carers or the person using that technology as well and finally um Technologies and solutions should be implemented to enable people of dementia to live independently in a way that does make them feel abandoned and as you can see on the slide um patient and public involvement is really important and that came through the workshop as well should be embedded throughout oh sorry n did you want me to carry on with our with our slides yeah um so uh so we wanted another kind of point that came up um was that funders should provide opportunities for communities to come together uh that work from in different disciplines um via a funding call and cross fund opportunity so that's where this particular funding opportunity came from and the workshop report is linked there and we'll share the slides after the webinar as well so you can see see the other comments that people had around that so this is the aim and focus of our call so it's funding to develop networks um we call them Network pluses because there's some funding to uh run the plus part is funding to run research projects uh focused on the development and use of Novel Technologies and tools to enable people to live independently with dementia and we're looking to build capacity and bring together new interdisiplinary communities across engineering physical sciences health and care because we really want people to be ready to tackle all challenges in uh dementia research so these are some of the priorities um within that we've identified within the call um so we're particularly interested in networks that look at some of the following um areas so Technologies to support Independence in the home uh investigating how feasible and um how to implement and uh use existing Technologies and tools uh that are used for uh different uh conditions or other other areas and kind of imple implementing them in the dementia space tools and Technologies to facilitate and work um synergistically with Health and Care Professionals and carers technology that helps to create a system that evolves with people's needs as we understand um again everyone's um different um everyone's individual and um people have uh different uh I guess Pathways in their journey of um since receiving a diagnosis and how to support people at different at different stages of that and we really want to support people to live well beyond their home in their communities um kind of enjoy um enjoy their lives um and be independent so applicants will need to consider the following things within that application so what we're really looking for is for you to build interdisciplinary collaborations and Foster that multidisiplinary working we want you to consider the needs of a diverse range of group um of different groups and communities we want you to put this the needs of uh patients and um people have lived experience at the center of networks we want you to explore and identify Pathways and barriers to implementing these tools and Technologies so that hopefully um any Technologies develops will um have a CH more of a chance of success and um as part of the uh research element we're really looking for Creative new and exciting um research ideas and we would like some of your application to focus on the advancement and development of Novel um engineering physical sciences research that can really hopefully create a step change um in this area of supporting Independence um in the home so moving on uh just a few more details about the funding opportunity um so this is the funding and the process so the full economic cost of your project can be uh 2 million and epsc and nihr will fund 80% of that the total fund is 6 million for this particular funding opportunity your network can be up to 3 years in length and we hope that you would use your network to um build into to feature larger um potentially Grant applications or larger projects uh just to um let you know some key dates so there's an expression of Interest deadline which isn't mandatory next Friday uh 11th of July at 4M this is just to help us to identify reviewers and plan for demand um the stage isn't assessed and you can change your information prior to the submission of your proposal uh so this is the um the full more information on the key dates so the full proposal stage closes on the 10th of September um and then we will have an expert panel to prioritize the applications in October and finally there'll be an interview panel um in December so eligibility we are standard um eligibility rules apply and you can find more information on our website and please do get in touch if you have any um concerns around eligibility and we can point you to the in the right direction these are the assessment criteria um against which the peer reviewers will be assessing your application uh so the vision and approach of the network and how it meets the criteria of the funding opportunity how it's going to help uh people um to be more independent uh the capability of the applicant and the team to actually deliver the network the resources that you've requested and how you've Justified those uh to do the network um the ethical and responsible research Innovation considerations of the project the added value of the network plus and the program leadership and management um of how you will actually manage that Network plus involve all the right stakeholders and distribute the um plus funds that you will be allocating and there's a lot more information in the app funding opportunity so please do have a look at that um and happy to answer any questions around those so um just to highlight that patient and public involvement as we've seen already is really important we'd like you to um consider uh sort of Health equities in your network make sure you're embedding um excal diverse and um inclusive voices from patient and public involvement uh we're looking for Clear evidence of genuine co-creation um embedding um engagement with patients people with lived experience and health professionals from the outset of your network application and throughout the lifetime of the network um and we're looking for engagement with people from all different and diverse backgrounds including those from potentially uh deprived underserved or underrepresented areas so um this just a few hints and tips about what might make a good application uh so thinking about the scope making sure how making it clear how you're addressing the funding opportunity specifically thinking about um how this is a network um Grant bringing communities together um and it's which is different to a project Grant um thinking about how your research will benefit the end users and making that really clear so how are you going to um enable that Independence for people living with dementia we're looking for multi-disciplinary applications so we're bring we want to bring together different communities um we want you to show how your application's been shaped by key stakeholders um and again just a just a reminder to please look at the assessment criteria on the uh website and uh this is my final slide and then I'll hand over to our Network plus grant holder to tell you a bit more about how uh she's found running a network um so just uh something to bear in mind we would expect funded networks to establish and maintain links with other Investments um which are relevant to nhr alimer societ societies and ukri uh for example there's a a current um economic and social research Council nhr and Alzheimer Society Network plus call um which were which um should soon be announced um and we'd really like networks to establish links with with these as well um we really want to increase the collaborative working environment across disciplines and connect other people across the research landscape um and that will include sort of working with theist activities um to create shared opportunities in this area and hopefully build some really great multidisiplinary proposals in the future so now I'm going to um hand over uh to uh Network plus um holder of one of VSC Network plus grant holders uh so Professor Vicky Le is a professor of informatics and digital Health um and um she is the principal investigator and director of the epsc future blood testing for inclusive monitoring and personalized analytics Network plus so I will hand over 10 that and I will just stop sharing my screen thank you very much and I think oh yeah perfect Vicky I'll hand over to you thank you great let me just share my screen first uh can you see my screen yes I can see it not in presentation mod but I can see it yeah let me turn it presentation yeah perfect thank you right um thank you um thank you for inviting me um my name is basilia can call me Vicky and I'm a professor of informatics and digital Health uh from unit for writing and I'm currently leading a network called future blood testing Network and in this 15 minutes I will briefly share uh the experience that how we run our Network the full name of Network you can see it's a future blood testing uh for inclusive monitoring and personalized analytics Network um so our Network focused on uh a challenge in the Community Health and Care and especially we chose the blood testing uh as a key challenge area because we think the blood testing is always the most common uh uh medical test that support the medical decision making and a lot of the pathways depend on the uh effic ient and accurate blood testing um but the challenge is that it's always high demand uh of the labor test from the community setting and especially uh when we launch our Network which is 2021 um and that is when we have the pandemic and people are encouraged stay at home um and we have virtual clinics but for the patients we still have to go to hospital to get a blood test done so especially it's challenge for a lot of vulnerable patients for can cancer patient so that is a key idea we would like to address uh from our Network um so we really want to have a solution that enable the patients and health professional to carry out the the uh blood monitoring or test remotely so which is beyond just virtual clinics and that will be able to speed up uh uh decision making and in a way reducing the waiting list and of things and also how to use the data uh of the remote monitoring that can provide more better personalized uh decision support at the individual level um when we think about this Challenge and all the possibilities we realize it's really U involve all the different uh expertise for example clinical science engineering sensing or chemistry or different expertise and on the other hand we also need have a lot of stakeholders in there patients most important researchers and techicians and um uh companies so how to get them together is our key aim of our Network to build this community to bring people together so we can develop Technologies um with a vision of the remote rapid affordable and more inclusive Monitor and personalized analytics so patient be able to get uh in the future be able to have the Technologies for blood monitoring at home so we the shared vision uh we shared with our partners and our uh investigators and also patient and the clinicians so we come up with a future blood testing approach uh that we enage at uh the testing at the nonclinical setting and um in the in the particular in the exampler clinical areas we have identified key uh technical three key technical areas our Network um so if you look at diagrams form the remote blood monitoring that for example device for uh for the uh blood uh biomarker identification through ICT for secured uh data sharing as well as that AI to uh to provide more personalized analytics so this three we believe the this three key areas together so we would like to bring in the community to develop a new digital Health Systems so that address the key technical questions in these three areas um that in the end we can support real time BL uh uh monitoring self management and uh timely intervention in the future in the community so apart from myself at the pi we also have colleagues uh from um like Ro buer from Kent MAA from the univ of Birmingham Jeremy free from Southampton and sery cport from Nottingham as a co- investigators and we have coordinators samansa and Rachel uh together in coordinating our Network activ activities um and also we have a international uh Network Consortium um that bring in all different aspect at The Advisory Board from International point of view and also have a quite quite a few NHS Partners which I think we really uh uh uh fortunate to have these Partners to bring in patient group as well as the in uh uh partners and uh and companies and other networks that will share uh the uh we thinking about Network networks to share the experience of the um the network we run before so the network plus fun so one of the very key areas that in our in our activity is a network plus fun so we use the network platform to find research and the research we mainly found two type of research and the first type of research we're looking at is the landscape report um so landscape will be really looking at what are the existing challenges opportunities and water recommendations um um in the existing blood testing in the UK and this funding as you can see we have fund to the Warwick University and the universal Hospital cover War share really we looked at the UK laboratory Diagnostics landscape report so uh the funding is really useful and then we're going to use this funding for further Pol uh to influence policym or regulator body to really inform the community about what challenge we have and what uh road map we're going to moving forward to address the challenges um and the second type of the research we use a network plus to found is the U is a research project so we call this collaborative Innovation project because we want to let our network members to focus on the codesign either codes codesign with the patients or codesign with the partners so that's why we call them as a uh C collaborative Innovation project so those pro project we uh focus on the key technical areas like I just mentioned AI ICT how you use AI um and uh Technologies to do the prognostic diagnostic all the disease trajectories um so this is two project with Kings College London and Warwick um and some other project we uh really focus on the remote monitoring so how the uh the uh portable device or variable device can be used for the disease detection or analy measurement so and some other projects including the not only disease detection but also the how can you use remote monitoring for the treatment management um and also continuous monitoring for all different blood um biomakers so all of this project quite new so um um so we found in total eight project uh for the research project so in total one landscape report and eight uh uh collaborative Innovation fund uh to support the researchers in our Network to develop their their research um another part of our uh network activity quite important part is the network conferences so we use a ground of network ground to organize or a series of uh workshops inperson conferences and webinars so for example so we planed three in-person uh uh conferences we had already had two so we start from 2022 the first inperson conference we scoped out the uh challenges opportunities um in the overall uh landscape and we launched our funding call in the first uh conference as well and in the second conference conference 2023 um so we really focused on the key Technologies in the key uh technical areas remote monitoring uh uh testing Monitor and Ai and we not only bring the researchers but also patients so patient voice can be heard as well in the conference and in 2024 so this year we will have our final conference uh looking at the digital Health um that really look at the future of uh of the of the future blood testing So based on what we F founded and what the all activities what with the future agend research agenda um in this topic um so the the the the conference really useful to connecting people but we also found another quite interest uh useful way to connect between people is a network online webinars so we organize uh uh online webinars every month so every month we have two webinars uh going on so uh so people people join the webinars talking about different research uh topic and actually at today we have a a webinar on the bi sensing of Aer disease today at 12:00 so it's all different topics um that in our Network so it's really useful to bring people together uh through the online online webinar and share the information um as um I think as Katherine said so we the one of the key I think quite quite quite good is that formal Network we have run running it for three years so are quite good to see a lot of group emerging so different group emerging with different topics and um um and ideas and they they we support them for small project project and after 3 years I've got a big project so some we have a lot of members that um uh secured full on uh fundings and I use example of myself as well so we we we emerged a Consortium uh from Reading uh and to hospitals as well as patients together and from another University from leer Oxford and Birmingham and the Health Innovation Network Oxford as well so we merge the conso te together and we look at the using the blood test result and like electronic patient record to develop AI uh machine learning model to early detect inflam arties so that we uh get support from epsc AF Health to develop research further develop research and then uh we got support from ANA to further develop this Research into a product uh for the evaluation so that is an example um another uh activities including the international activities that is not only raise awareness in the UK but also raising awareness from in the US and Hong Kong as well um so that is quite good uh I think quite good experience to sharing the global Innovation model how to use blood testing and how to uh um uh to promote this uh uh to the our research so in a summary um so um I think mainly in for this three years of running this network I think it's really good experience and although we have a lot of fun uh lot of meetings so met a lot of people uh breeding people and it's really good to see the knowledge sharing through our conferences and webinars um and I think really important thing like as a network coordinator or the leader is that connecting people so because some of the researchers they may need um um the p pilot the research in the NHS or they want to he hear more The Voice from patients or some company they may also have connections with from with a researcher for collaboration so we connect people uh together so they enable the research happening and another things raising awareness so that's in the end we build the community and all the different and with Community with all the different Consortium for further development Network plus fun uh we found uh landscape report really useful to to to find use the finding to inform the policymaking and also um to inform the future research agenda uh for the Innovation fund some other network call it feasibility study um but I think it's really useful to support early career researchers who has brilliant ideas but who doesn't have a lot of resource to develop the research but this would be good opportunity for them and also for translational research that give them opportunity to opportunity to develop proof a concept um uh research so so that they can apply for larger funding in the future so yeah so that is overall uh experience um in nsh that you know how we run our Network um if you want to know more about our Network how we run it you can go to our website or you can email me for if you have any question so that's all thank you thank you so much Vicky that was really really helpful to hear from your perspective about running the the network Plus thank you I think um we're going to do the question and answer now I think Vicki do you have time to stay on the panel perfect thank you so I'll hand over to Olivia who's going to um have a look at the questions for us I should have mentioned actually that you can up vot uh the questions if there's one you particularly would like us to answer you can select that in the Q&A section yeah people have been doing that but good to announce to to the rest um so we've got a question will this provide funding for post doctoral research Associates uh yeah I can um answer that one so yes uh we will fund uh post stocks um on the grants um obviously you just need to make sure you're justifying um what their role is on the grant um we will expect you to um I suppose you might need resource for those as part of your feasibility studies uh so you can cost this under directly incurred costs um and they can be funded there okay thank you um and can the lead applicant be from an NHS trust or a provider

2024-07-19 06:23

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