Tagged / healthcare

BU Briefing – Comparing efficiency in reducing adult cancer in the UK & 20 Western countries

Our BU briefing papers are designed to make our research outputs accessible and easily digestible so that our research findings can quickly be applied – whether to society, culture, public policy, services, the environment or to improve quality of life. They have been created to highlight research findings and their potential impact within their field. 

The response to medical advances, greater expectations, extended longevity and the rising cost of health care, especially for cancer, means health inflation raises almost 3% p.a. and has meant that every Western nation has the need to devote considerably more of its ‘national income’ (gross domestic product) to healthcare.

So, how efficient is the UK in reducing adult (55–74) cancer mortality rates and total mortality rates compared to the other 21 similar socio-economic Western countries?

In this paper, efficiency ratios were calculated by dividing reduced mortality over the period by the average percentage of national income spent on healthcare.

Click here to read the briefing paper.

For more information about the research, contact Professor Colin Pritchard at cpritchard@bournemouth.ac.uk, Tamas Hickish at thickish@bournemouth.ac.uk or Emily Rosenorn-Lanng at elanng@bournemouth.ac.uk.
To find out how your research output could be turned into a BU Briefing, contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Introduction to Normalization Process Theory (NPT) – 7 February 2018

PG research

Half day seminar
open to BU Staff, Clinicians, PGRs and PGT Students

Implementing service development in healthcare – an introduction to Normalization Process Theory (NPT)

On Wenesday 7 February 2018 in B317, Bournemouth House, Lansdowne Campus at 13.00, there will be a half day seminar introducing an approach to exploring implementation of service developments in healthcare.

To book your place and/or to find out more information please contact
Dr Mike Bracher 
mbracher@bournemouth.ac.uk

BU Briefing – Understanding Afghan healthcare providers

Our BU briefing papers are designed to make our research outputs accessible and easily digestible so that our research findings can quickly be applied – whether to society, culture, public policy, services, the environment or to improve quality of life. They have been created to highlight research findings and their potential impact within their field. 

This paper focuses on the perspectives of Afghan healthcare providers on their roles, experiences, values and motivations, and the impact this has on the quality of care for perinatal women and their newborn babies.  To understand their perspectives , the researchers undertook a six-week observation – including interviews and focus groups – to analyse the culture of a maternity hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan.

This research study offers multiple insights into Afghan healthcare provider behaviour and reveals complex interrelated issues that affect care in this setting.  It is one of few international studies that explore care from the perspective of healthcare providers in their cultural and social environment.  It reveals that understanding the context of healthcare is crucial to understanding behaviour and the underlying problems to quality of care.

Click here to read the briefing paper.

For more information about the research, contact Professor Edwin van Teijlingen at evteijlingen@bournemouth.ac.uk or Immy Holloway at ihollowa@bournemouth.ac.uk. 
To find out how your research output could be turned into a BU Briefing, contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Funding opportunity – Innovation in health and life sciences 2

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

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Innovate UK – Innovation in health and life sciences 2 – Call now open!

Innovate UK is investing up to £15 million in projects addressing technical or commercial challenges in health and life sciences (H&LS).

The H&LS sector focuses on agriculture, food and healthcare. It is supported by bioscience technology, medical research and engineering and physical sciences expertise. The aim is to increase competitiveness for UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Grants can be awarded to projects led by a UK-based business of any size. In certain circumstances a research and technology organisation (RTO) may also be eligible to lead. (See section 5 of the briefing document.)

SMEs are encouraged to lead on projects. An SME can apply on its own for funding up to £100,000. All consortia must involve at least one SME.

We expect projects to last from 6 months to 3 years and range in size from total project costs of £50,000 to £2 million.

There are 2 options for applications to this competition:

  • £5 million for projects that last from 6 months to 1 year with total project costs from £50,000 to £100,000
  • £10 million for projects lasting from 1 year to 3 years with total project costs between £100,000 and £2 million

Key dates:

  • Competion opens 6 February
  • Register by midday 5 April
  • Apply before midday 12 April

Competion brief and more information: Click here.

If you are interested in submitting to this  call you must contact your  RKEO Funding Development Officer with adequate notice before the deadline.

For more funding opportunities that are most relevant to you, you can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in  RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

Funding opportuntity – Innovation in health and life sciences

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

InnovateUK_LogoA_Interim_RGBx320govuk[1]

Innovate UK – Innovation in health and life sciences 2 – opens soon!

Innovate UK is investing up to £15 million in projects addressing technical or commercial challenges in health and life sciences (H&LS).

The H&LS sector focuses on agriculture, food and healthcare. It is supported by bioscience technology, medical research and engineering and physical sciences expertise. The aim is to increase competitiveness for UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Grants can be awarded to projects led by a UK-based business of any size. In certain circumstances a research and technology organisation (RTO) may also be eligible to lead. (See section 5 of the briefing document.)

SMEs are encouraged to lead on projects. An SME can apply on its own for funding up to £100,000. All consortia must involve at least one SME.

We expect projects to last from 6 months to 3 years and range in size from total project costs of £50,000 to £2 million.

There are 2 options for applications to this competition:

  • £5 million for projects that last from 6 months to 1 year with total project costs from £50,000 to £100,000
  • £10 million for projects lasting from 1 year to 3 years with total project costs between £100,000 and £2 million

Key dates:

  • Competion opens 6 February
  • Register by midday 5 April
  • Apply before midday 12 April

Competion brief and more information: Click here.

If you are interested in submitting to this  call you must contact your  RKEO Funding Development Officer with adequate notice before the deadline.

For more funding opportunities that are most relevant to you, you can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in  RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

 

Creative England Interactive Healthcare Fund

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

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The South West Interactive Healthcare Programme  is currently seeking applications from the creative sector in addition to healthcare.

This £500,000 competition is funded by Creative England’s regional growth fund and run by South West and West of England Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) in conjunction with SETsquared.

The priorities themes for this competition are:

  • Enabling the health and care workforce, patients, their carers and families to work more effectively in care settings
  • Enabling patients and citizens to manage their health and wellbeing independently
  • Influencing and incentivising behaviour to improve health outcomes.

The funding is available to small or medium sized enterprises based in England (outside of Greater London) via investments of between £25,000 and £50,000. Funding will be allocated to support the uptake and market traction of innovative digital technologies that will clearly improve patient care and health service provision.

Applications will be assessed on a rolling basis and the final deadline for submissions is 30 September 2016. For the full guidelines and an application form, please visit the Creative England website.

Sensor-integrated urometer for measuring real-time urine output (HEIF funded project)

Business Engagement, HEIF, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

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The project team from the Faculty of Science & Technology has received Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) to undertake a series of activities aimed at encouraging university and the public sector to harness the benefits of advanced assistive technologies. (The HEIF  project started last year and is due to finish at the end of July.)

The nature of HEIF funding encourages knowledge exchange and support to develop a broad range of knowledge based interactions between universities and colleges and the wider word, which result in economic and social benefit to the UK.  In current clinical practices, urinary output measurement and supervision are prevailing medical intervention treatments for patients suffering from critical illness, aging bladder, post-surgery urination difficulties and long-term bedridden. However, the urinary output is still measured and monitored manually by healthcare staff, which is extremely time-consuming and prone to undesirable human errors commonly, arose in these repetitive and monotonous tasks. The project aims to invent an automatic device for remotely monitoring of urinary output, which features real-time remotely wireless catheter fall-off and flow rate monitoring, urinary output minute-by-minute monitoring and real-time states visualization.

The project team is made up of a number of researchers and students from multidisciplinary domains in addition to academics. The team (Prof Hongnian Yu, Mr Arif Reza Anwary; Mr Daniel Craven, Mr Muhammad Akbar, and Mr Pengcheng Liu) has recently presented their three developed prototypes at the collaborator’s site (Royal Bournemouth Hospital). The feedback and comments from the hospital staff are very positive. Dr Simon McLaughlin, the project collaborator from the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, said ‘The project looks to have progressed well. The work is excellent and the one of the prototypes is almost ready to deploy.’

The team  hope to continue to consolidate the current developed prototypes and build on top of them to invent the commercially acceptable products.

£2.5m funding available – SBRI Healthcare Autumn 2014

Funding opportunities

SBRI Healthcare Autumn 2014

The National Health Service England and the NHS Academic Health Science Networks have opened multiple new SBRI competitions with a total of £2.5m funding available in Phase 1 to develop technologies and innovative solutions that can provide better health outcomes in the areas of:

  • Innovation in child & adolescent mental health
  • Improving care of diabetic foot ulcer
  • Medical imaging
  • Improving efficiency & experience of outpatient services
  • Brain injury healthcare

Phase 1 is intended to show the technical feasibility of the proposed concept. Development contracts will be awarded for a maximum of 6 months and £100,000 (inc VAT) per project.  Projects that have completed Phase 1 successfully will be eligible for Phase 2 later in the year. Phase 2 contracts are intended to develop and evaluate prototypes or demonstration units from the more promising technologies in Phase 1.

More information including briefs for the challenges can be found on the website.

Application process

For further details, including the application process click here. The deadline for applications is 9 December 2014

 

 

 

£1million in digital healthcare innovation available from Creative England

Funding opportunities

This fund is designed to stimulate creative and digital innovation in This UK healthcare.
Are you working with or know of  small creative and digital businesses (SMEs) with innovative concepts or prototypes using digital technology to improve patient care and health services?
These maybe in areas such as dementia, social care, and cardiovascular and medication management.
The South West is one of the first three regions to benefit from this funding opportunity.
Key information:
  • 5 x £50,000 investments will be made.
  • Companies must be based in the North, Midlands or South West.
  • Examples of projects could be improving quality of care; caring for people with dementia; supporting people with long-term conditions; and data visualisation.
  • Mobile apps, development of a new game for tablet or mobile are also eligible.

Applications will be assessed on a rolling basis and the fund will close on 31 October 2014.

More information can be found here.

Alternatively please feel free to contact

Jayne Codling – Knowledge Exchange Adviser

Ext 61215 jcodling@bournemouth.ac.uk

CoPMRE Eleventh Annual Symposium: Impact in Healthcare Research and Education’

The Centre of Postgraduate Medical Research and Education are hosting their Eleventh Annual Symposium on Tuesday 14 October 2014.

The event will focus on developments and activities around impact in healthcare research and education. It will explore impact from the perspectives of the public, the research funder, the university, the provider, the student and the medical educator.

Speakers include:

  • Professor Trish Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care and Dean for Research Impact, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry
  • Simon Denegri, Chair INVOLVE
  • Natalie Carter, Head of Research Liaison and Evaluation, Arthritis Research UK
  • Jonathan Grant, Director, Kings Policy Institute.

This symposium is suitable for primary and secondary doctors, allied healthcare professionals, academics and anyone with an interest in medical research and education. Interested staff from across BU are invited and very welcome.

You can register on Eventbrite here. For more information please contact Audrey Dixon.

Technology Strategy Board and MRC call to address Healthcare challenges

Funding opportunities

The £180 million Biomedical Catalyst, announced by David Cameron in December 2011, will see the Medical Research Council and the Technology Strategy Board working together to provide responsive and effective support for the best life science opportunities arising in the UK.

Support through the Biomedical Catalyst is available to UK businesses (SMEs) and academics looking to develop innovative solutions to healthcare challenges either individually or in collaboration.

This joint programme between the MRC and TSB will offer three categories of grant:

Feasibility Award

Early Stage Award

 Late Stage Award

The categories are designed to support the maturation of an idea from concept to commercialisation. This will create a pipeline of projects encompassing the early stage exploration of commercial and technical potential through to proving utility in the field (which may involve human clinical trials) and development prior to commercialisation. Applicants may apply for the award category most appropriate for their work without having received a prior award.

Support will be available for projects arising from any sector or discipline that are aimed at addressing healthcare challenges. Example solutions may include (but are not limited to): stratified healthcare (both therapy and diagnostic components), regenerative medicine, diagnostics, eHealth and mHealth solutions, enabling medical technologies and devices. The Biomedical Catalyst will seek to support those opportunities which demonstrate the highest scientific and commercial potential irrespective of medical area.

Please see the Technology Strategy Board healthcare page for more information about their work in this area.

The Biomedical Catalyst will operate in response mode and will in essence be “always open”. However to assist the processing of applications there will be key submission and assessment dates which will differ depending on the category of award and applicant type, please see the links/dates below for further details. The assessment of Early and Late Stage awards will culminate in a panel assessment for both academic and business led applications enabling funding decisions to be made three times a year.

All applications will be subject to assessment by independent expert reviewers with short-listed applicants for Late Stage Awards being interviewed by a committee. Applicants for Late Stage Awards are advised to note that should they be successful in being invited to interview they should hold the dates of the next committee meetings as these are fixed and non-negotiable. Dates will be confirmed when applicants are sent their invitation to submit a full stage proposal (and will be posted on this page in due course).

Please note: If your application is led by an academic, you will need to apply on the Medical Research Council website.

If your application is led by a business, you should make your application on the TSB website.

Open date: 30 April 2012

Email: competitions@innovateuk.org

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

                                                                                                                                       

Assessing societal impact of social work research

REF Subjects, Research themes

Edwin Van TeijingenREF logoJonathan Parker
The Research Excellence Framework, or REF, is the new assessment method for publically funded research in universities. Its controversial new ‘impact’ element rates work based on evidence of social, economic or cultural benefits generated from it. But how easily can such things be quantified, particularly in applied academic subjects like social work?

Professors Jonathan Parker and Edwin van Teijlingen from Bournemouth University have addressed these questions in their paper ‘The Research Excellence Framework (REF): Assessing the Impact of Social Work Research on Society’, published in Practice: Social Work in Action.

They argue that ‘the framework raises doubts about whether it is possible to capture fully the impact of social work research at all, and social work itself for that matter’, and stress that some pathways need to be identified to do this.

In suggesting ways to evidence impact, such as primary evaluative research, Parker and Van Teijlingen also outline the stumbling blocks. There are data protection laws and the expense and time of tying up research evaluation with another research project.

The solution, they say, is for social work research to be built and undertaken in partnership with social care agencies; that impact is everybody’s concern and practitioners and those who use social work services and their carers have a role to play in its creation and identification.

Parker and Van Teijlingen acknowledge that the REF will promote critical-thinking, engage practitioners and address the challenges of public spending restraint, but express a deep-seated concern that this new method of assessment will mark a loss of ‘conceptual, theoretical and critical’ research.

Although assessing research through improved social, economic, health, and environmental aspects of life is unlikely to be questioned, Parker and Van Teijlingen strongly argue that it should not be the only set of research outcomes recognised.  They argue that if the REF approach becomes common currency, ‘society is likely to lose the deeper understandings and meanings that have permeated thinking and, no doubt practice and behaviour.’

Both firmly believe BU’s research programme designed to enhance social work practice through continuing professional education has changed practice and influenced policy, as well as numerous other benefits to culture, public services, health, environment and quality of life.

Read Parker and Van Teijlingen’s full paper.

Launch of EU-funded ‘ecancerHub’ website

A new hub of information for those affected by cancer has just been launched, providing an open-access, integrated approach to providing the whole cancer community with high-quality and trustworthy information. The product of two years’ work as part of the ‘Establishing an efficient network for cancer communication in Europe’) project, which was boosted by more than EUR 1.2 million of funding under the ‘Science in Society’ Theme of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), ‘ecancerHub‘ brings together information from major European cancer organisations in one easy-to-use site. The 2-year long EUROCANCERCOMS project was made up of 18 project partners from Belgium, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.  By establishing an integrated EU model for a Europe-wide cancer information and policy exchange portal, the pan-European team have succeeded in their aim of creating a functional exchange system for accurate information and intelligence.