Healthcare and bioscience
The theme unites researchers from physics and engineering to support the translation of their research excellence into real-world solutions.
The theme addresses major challenges in health technology, such as improving population health and prevention, discovering and accelerating the development of new interventions and a particular focus on transforming early prediction and diagnosis
Theme members have significant experience in co-creating interventions with clinical partners, healthcare providers, and patients and their representatives and translation of their research through collaboration with industry, filing patents, licensing technology and forming spin-out companies.
Supporting people to live healthier lives and preventing ill health are of key importance for the UK and globally. This challenge focuses on the innovation of novel technologies and interventions that can help understand, treat and reduce disease and equitably improve health outcomes. Research within this challenge aims to be co-created with stakeholders including patients, carers, healthcare professionals and policymakers to ensure interventions equitably address societal priorities and needs.
Responding to this challenge, we have recently formed the York Equitable Technology Lab (ETL) as part of the University’s Sparks programme. The ETL ensures science and technology meet the real needs of people, enabling them to better address the challenges that are important in their everyday lives. Accordingly, we have developed methods that allow scientists and engineers to work with technology end-users to co-develop technologies that address end-user priorities, have societal support, and are tuned for wide-scale implementation - all of which will help improve population health while driving business growth.
A specific example are technologies for the diagnosis and monitoring of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative conditions. The core of this technology is our “white-box machine learning” approach. This allows the patient to "see" what data is used and how the model uses their data to predict their condition and optimise treatment; enhancing transparency and public trust in our machine learning algorithms. Our clinically-validated medical devices have been commercialised through ClearSky Medical Diagnostics Ltd. and have been used in medical centres and clinical trials worldwide.
Analytical technologies are fundamental in modern healthcare systems, supporting early and accurate diagnosis of acute and chronic disease and guiding optimum treatment. Addressing all aspects of health including physical, mental, and environmental health, we are focused on the need for novel techniques that enable patient-specific detection of health where and when it is needed. York researchers are exploring optical, mechanical and electrical methods towards novel diagnostic technologies, addressing issues such as antimicrobial resistance and disinfection, the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease and optimising treatment for patients with autoimmune disease.
Phorest Diagnostics is a recent spin-out based on our extensive research in nanophotonic biosensors developing blood tests for home and community use.
This challenge focuses on the need to produce safer, more targeted treatments and interventions fit for the future. A strong subgroup is interested in robotics for healthcare, such as innovative robotic-assisted orthopaedic solutions and products, robotics for minimally invasive surgery, vision-controlled robotics for supporting disabled or impaired patients and novel bio-inspired low-cost bionic limbs.
Another priority in this area is the development of effective treatments for people affected by long term conditions and co-morbidities, especially related to ageing. Asuuta Limited is a spin-out company that is developing a virtual reality (VR) based digital therapeutic for patients recovering from neurological impairment, such as a stroke. Asuuta’s StepSense CLINIC is a plug-and-play affordable cloud-based platform applicable to a wide range of musculoskeletal and neurological movement-limiting conditions; clinical trials and studies include chronic pain, osteoarthritis, traumatic brain injury, chronic fatigue/ME, Parkinson’s disease and long COVID. The StepSense HOME app extends this functionality to the home, community care or other mobile setting.