Tag Archives: health

Events, Research

Creating digital technologies for dementia care

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Designers, coders, hackers and researchers are coming together for an event aimed at exploring how digital technologies could support and improve dementia care.

Create-4-Dementia, from 30th to 31st May 2015, is the first public event of the Social Computing and Mental Health Research Network led by the University of Lincoln, UK, and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Thee two-day hackathon will culminate in the creation of digital prototypes.

Network leader Professor Shaun Lawson, from the School of Computer Science at the University of Lincoln, said: “The design of technology to address issues around dementia has received a lot of attention, but it remains a very difficult and sensitive area. At this event we want to draw in people with any and all relevant skillsets so that everyone’s voice is heard – in particular we want to see if we can rethink entire aspects of the approach to designing for dementia.”

The Social Computing and Mental Health Research Network was created to address challenges around creating online mental health services that could offer a more compelling and convenient way to access information, therapy and support.

The network, which is conducted in partnership with Newcastle University School of Computing Science in collaboration with NIHR MindTech Healthcare Technology Co-operative at Nottingham, aims to create a new interdisciplinary research community, by developing interaction between science, technology, clinical and commercial groups and charities.

Experts in a number of fields, such as social computing and human computer interaction, are working together to try and understand what the challenges are in using mobile and web applications, as well as social media, to assist people with mental health problems and create new collaborative multidisciplinary research proposals.

On the Create-4-Dementia event, Dr Michael Craven, Senior Research Fellow with MindTech and the University of Nottingham Faculty of Engineering, and member of the Centre for Dementia, said: “This is a great opportunity for engineers and software designers to engage with unmet needs in dementia and begin to formulate technology solutions.”

Teams will compete for juried prizes to the value of £1,000 and can apply for additional research funding of up to £10,000.

For more information on  the event, which is taking place at the Great Northern Museum in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, visit http://create4dementia.com/apply.

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School news

Innovative breakthrough in ‘cancer seeing’ technology wins coveted industry accolade

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An international research team developing world-first technology for use in cancer treatment, using proton beams to localise treatment and cause less damage to healthy tissue, has won a global competition recognising the best innovations in engineering, science and technology.

The consortium of researchers led by Professor Nigel Allinson MBE from the University of Lincoln, UK, received a prestigious Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Innovation Award.

The team behind the PRaVDA project was named as the winner in the Model-Based Engineering category for its Proton CT ‘Seeing cancer during proton therapy’ innovation.

Professor Nigel Allinson

The PRaVDA innovation will assist radiotherapists by helping them to achieve accurate proton CT images. Over half of all cancer patients receive radiotherapy as part of their curative treatment, and most radiotherapy is delivered using high-energy external beams of x-rays. Proton beam therapy, however, uses a different type of beam to conventional radiotherapy. It uses a high-energy beam of protons. Like x-rays, protons can penetrate tissue to reach deep tumours.  However, compared to x-rays, protons cause less damage to healthy tissue in front of the tumour, and no damage at all to healthy tissue lying behind, which greatly reduces the side effects of radiation therapy.

Professor Allinson, Distinguished Professor of Image Engineering in Lincoln’s School of Computer Science, said: “We are really pleased to have won this award – it’s great to receive such recognition from a global institution as renowned and long-running as the IET.  Hopefully this award will mean that we can continue to provide accurate cancer treatment for more and more patients.”

He added: “We are mid-way through our three-year project to create world-first technology which will make proton therapy a viable treatment option for many more cancer patients. With two new government-funded proton therapy centres due to open in the UK by 2018, and the number of centres worldwide expected to double in the next decade, PRaVDA has the potential to make a profound contribution to the global fight against cancer.”

Professor Allinson heads the PRaVDA project team, which also includes the University of Birmingham, University of Liverpool, University of Surrey, University of Warwick, University of Cape Town, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust and United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust.

William Webb, IET President, said: “The IET Innovation Awards celebrate the best in global innovation, highlighting the rapid and exciting pace of development in today’s engineering and technology industry. Congratulations to the team for their win. They were selected from a highly impressive set of global innovations as one of the most forward-thinking, pioneering innovations in the field.

“These awards are part of the IET’s mission to inspire engineering excellence, which last year provided over £500,000 to celebrate excellence and research in the sector and inspire the next generation of engineers and technicians.  Our awards recognise and reward the industry’s elite, from apprentices and technicians at the start of their careers, through to senior established professionals.”

The awards took place in London on 19th November 2014 and were hosted by TV presenter Kate Russell. For more information on the IET Innovation Awards, visit:http://conferences.theiet.org/innovation/ceremony/index.cfm

Research, School news

LSoCS was well represented in the “Annual Vision & Language (V&L) Network workshop”

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Two Presentations and Posters delivered by members of the Lincoln School of Computer Science (LSoCS), and the DCAPI research group, while attending the Annual Vision & Language (V&L) Network Workshop, 13-14th Dec. 2012 in Sheffield, UK.

Amr Ahmed, Amjad Al-tadmri and Deema AbdalHafeth attended the event, where  2 oral presentations and 2 posters were delivered and presented about their research work:

1. VisualNet: Semantic Commonsense Knowledgebase for Visual Applications
2. Investigating text analysis of user-generated contents for health related applications

Abstracts are available on ( http://www.vlnet.org.uk/VLW12/VLW-2012-Accepted-Abstracts.html)

Congratulations for all involved.

Amjad Altadmri and Amr Ahmed around their poster at the Vision & Language Net workshop, 13-14th Dec 2012, Sheffield, UK.
Amjad Altadmri and Amr Ahmed around their poster at the Vision & Language Net workshop, 13-14th Dec 2012, Sheffield, UK.
Deema AbdalHafeth and Amr Ahmed at the Vision & Language Net workshop, 13-14th Dec 2012, Sheffield, UK.
Deema AbdalHafeth and Amr Ahmed at the Vision & Language Net workshop, 13-14th Dec 2012, Sheffield, UK.

The event included tutorial sessions (Vision for language people, and language for vision people) and key-note speakers from organisers of popular challenges (e.g. TRECVID and ImageNet).

We had even better presence this year. Last year, we had a good presence in the last year’s workshop (http://amrahmed.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2011/09/19/vl-network-workshop-brighton/), had good discussions and useful feedback on the presented work.

Thanks and well done for all involved.