EPSRC’s healthcare technologies theme (together with NIRH and the Alzheimer’s Society) have announced funding to develop a ‘NetworkPlus’ focused on the use and development of novel tools and technologies to enable people to live independently with dementia.
Networks should be multidisciplinary and include clinical experts and people with lived experiences of dementia to ensure that technologies are developed with clinical context and user needs in mind. This includes pathways and barriers to implementation of tools and technologies in the health and care system. They should also explore how technologies can be integrated into the home and join up care with carers and health and social care professionals, where appropriate.
Applications in the following areas are particularly welcome:
- Exploring the use and development of novel tools and technologies to support people with dementia and their carers to live independently at home. The development of technologies in this area could include innovations in assistive technology, artificial intelligence and wearables.
- Investigating the feasibility, implementation and use of existing technologies and tools that have been successfully developed and produced for other areas at low cost or at scale and successfully used and implemented in the health and care system, but their benefits could be extended or adapted to support people to live independently with dementia and support their carers.
- Supporting people to live well beyond the home and in their communities, enabling them to remain part of neighbourhoods and communities and maintain a good quality of life. This may include technology to make public spaces, including transport and workplaces, more inclusive and not disabling.
- Developing technology that helps create a system that evolves with people’s needs, and seamlessly connects them to the support they need, ensuring technology is not burdensome or ineffective to the user. People living with dementia have evolving needs from receiving a diagnosis, adjusting to living with dementia, needing greater support with care, hospitalisation, and end of life care. Networks should consider technologies throughout this life cycle and explain which specific scenario(s) or stage(s) the research and technologies will tackle and how the technologies that are developed will be adapted for users, carers and health and care professionals.
- Developing tools and technology to facilitate and work synergistically with health and care professionals when supporting someone to live independently at home and outside of the home.
- Developing research methodologies that involve the end user and can support rapid and efficient implementation of tools and technologies and implementation at scale. Networks should explore and identify the pathways and barriers to implementation of tools and technologies in the health and social care system.
The full economic cost (FEC) of your project can be up to £2,000,000. EPSRC and NIHR will fund 80% of the FEC.
Networks can last up to 36 months.
Deadline: 10 September 2024
Read more and view scheme guidance
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