MATCH-Plus
Lead Research Organisation:
Brunel University London
Department Name: Information Systems Computing and Maths
Abstract
MATCH (Multidisciplinary Assessment of Technology Centre for Healthcare) is targeted at developing methods for assessing medical devices. This IMRC (Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre) has been running since November 2003, and has recently been funded for another 5 years to take it out to 2013. Over the first four years of its existence, it has focused on three major perspectives; economic evaluation, industrial process, and user needs. The economic piece has been in demand, particularly by the industrial partners, who need to articulate the worth of their products to healthcare systems that are increasingly focused on value for money. The industrial process research has provided a coherent framework in the form of the new product development cycle within which to understand the decisions that are made in bringing new technology to market.Because MATCH has been one of the smaller IMRCs, it has not been possible to cover all the bases with the level of activity that each merits. In particular, more effort needs to be focused on methods to address user needs. This proposal is to address that specific need, as well as to fill in some other gaps. Half of the funding is being made available by the Department of Health (DoH), which has a strong interest in stimulating better user-alignment in the development of new technology. In addition, the DoH wishes to see MATCH methods made available to the communities that will bid for its own research programmes: i4i (Invention for Innovation), NEAT (NHS Environmental Assessment Tool) and HTD (Health Technology Devices). Some funding has, therefore, been ringfenced to cover a set of conferences that will train the academic, and other bid communities, in the use of economic assessment and other evaluation techniques in relation to medical devices.Another piece of activity will be to strengthen the user needs research within MATCH. A Research Vision was submitted to the assessment panel under the MATCH renewal process and a rich research agenda has, consequently, already been agreed. This will be used to support a call that will fund a major tranche of research into user needs assessment.Smaller work-packages are also expected to be funded, with calls anticipated in such areas as linking economic assessment of medical products to supply-chain logistics, or other elements that are shown to need attention by later reviews. An exciting possibility lies in funding research that would take MATCH international, perhaps through a joint programme of work with a major US university. Again, one of the targets set in the review was to establish a truly international dimension to the research.This grant would not be possible without the main MATCH programme, which will bear the management costs and will provide the collaborations and partnerships, within which this activity can be most fruitful.
Publications
Morris D
(2014)
A web-based tool for eliciting probability distributions from experts
in Environmental Modelling & Software
O'Neill S
(2013)
Development of a Technology Adoption and Usage Prediction Tool for Assistive Technology for People with Dementia
in Interacting with Computers
O'Neill S
(2010)
Video Reminders as Cognitive Prosthetics for People with Dementia
in Ageing International
Pinto L
(2015)
A generic method to develop simulation models for ambulance systems
in Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory
Sonja O'Neill (Author)
(2010)
Health Economics Evaluation of Cognitive Prosthetics for People with Dementia
Sonja O'Neill (Author)
(2011)
Assessing Task Compliance Following Mobile Phone-Based Video Reminders in proceedings
Sonja O'Neill (Author)
(2011)
Assessing Task Compliance Following Reminders in proceedings of IET Assisted Living 2011
| Description | MATCH-Plus was run as an integrated programme with MATCH (EP/F063822/1) and built on the work of the original MATCH grant (GR/S29874/01), all under the MATCH brand. These are fully reported in: MATCH Final report (2003-2013); MATCH Impact Report - People Stories; MATCH Impact report - MATCH influence on Health, industry and policy. All of these are available electronically on www.match.ac.uk. For more details, see MATCH Renewal (EP/F063822/1). It is therefore not possible to disaggregate all the contributions. However, the key elements that were primarily MATCH+ are as follows. MATCH has delivered 19 training workshops in the UK, Europe and America to audiences from industry, academia and health, reaching nearly 300 academics, healthworkers and people from industry. MATCH's international work included programmes in: Africa, North America (especially Boston), China, Korea, Montreal, and Norway. In terms of academic progress, there were two main themes - methodological development around user needs and cognitive prosthetics. Related to the former, a recognised challenge was the need to marry the qualitative output usually generated via user needs assessments to the quantitative nature of health economic analysis - and a health economic model was constructed using data gathered from the available literature. Cognitive prosthetics: Assistive technology offers the potential to support people with dementia so that they may remain in their own homes for longer. In an effort to address these issues a number of user evaluation studies relating to the usage of video based reminders delivered through a mobile phone were conducted. The current version of the video based reminder system has been licensed to an Italian SME. |
| Exploitation Route | The main use is for communities offering services to those with early stage dementia, and there is a company (I+) that is pursuing this. For more details, see MATCH Renewal (EP/F063822/1) This work is already being exploited in the form of guidelines for SCIE. For more details, see MATCH Renewal (EP/F063822/1).My personal key finding is how difficult it has been to take the findings out to the wider world, despite spending several years in working on this. |
| Sectors | Healthcare |
| URL | http://www.match.ac.uk |
| Description | MATCH Plus was run as an integrated programme with the MATCH renewal grant (EP/F063822/1) and built on the work of the original MATCH grant (GR/S29874/01), all under the MATCH brand. These are fully reported in: MATCH Final report (2003-2013); MATCH Impact Report - People Stories; MATCH Impact report - MATCH influence on Health, industry and policy. All of these are available electronically on www.match.ac.uk. Beneficiaries: Various, see MATCH Final report (2003-2013); MATCH Impact Report - People Stories; MATCH Impact report - MATCH influence on Health, industry and policy. All of these are available electronically on www.match.ac.uk. Contribution Method: As described in the documents cited, we have made academic and economic contributions to the field and to companies in the markets around health. Since 2013, two further things have taken place, neither of which is fully mature. First Brunel brought together a grouping of clinicians, companies and universities under the Cumberland Initiative, starting in 2010. This was given a building for 3 years from 2014 and has undertaken a couple of health improvement projects. The other thing was that TEA-PoCT, project (reported) from Innovate UK (as it is now) has launched a company from Brunel. The Company is called HecoAnalytics and is the indirect offspring of MATCH. The outputs have pretty-much run their course. I am not aware of any other publications, for instance, that have emerged this year |
| First Year Of Impact | 2010 |
| Sector | Healthcare |
| Impact Types | Societal |
| Description | MATCH-Plus |
| Impact | During 2012 the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) were commissioned by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) to seek examples of how information technology and communications equipment had been used to enhance the lives of people with dementia. The aim of the work was to draw together all the current literature within the domain and to subsequently produce a best practice guidance document tailored for care workers to support them with the use of technology when working with people with dementia. Professor Nugent was invited to join an Expert Panel and attend an Expert Panel Workshop at SCIE's headquarters in London with a brief to support the production of the aforementioned guide. The outcome of the Expert Panel Workshop led to the production of an outline of how the guidelines should be presented in addition to the types of material to be included. IES collected feedback from Professor Nugent during development of the material and in October 2012 the guideline entitled Using ICT in activities for people with dementia. The guide is described as being a short introduction to using information and communication technology (ICT) in activities for people with dementia. It has been aimed at managers and staff in the care sector and providers of activities for people with dementia. To a certain extent it can be considered as a plain language guide about using mainstream technologies with people with dementia written in a manner that does not require a technology background. In addition, the guide has been developed to support both those who are new to this area as well as acting as a refresher for those already working with technology based solutions for persons with dementia. Target Audience: Government Department |
| Title | Chorus |
| Description | Chorus (chorusanalytics.co.uk) represents the continuation of work that evolved during the latter stages of the MATCH project. Initially we developed the Tweetcatcher (TC) tool, a web-service that allowed users to create search queries to the Twitter REST API and continually update the results to these queries to build extended timelines of tweet matches. A key strength of this tool was the "fire and forget" functionality which allowed multiple users to create queries and execute real-time updates in a "round-robin" fashion such that unbroken timelines could be retrieved using only the free Twitter API service. As a CI on MATCH, Cribbin developed tools and methods to support analysis of user generated (microblog) content, primarily to analyse public perception of risk around health events and to explore user needs around healthcare technology. This work has resulted in the Chorus suite which consists of two main tools: Tweetcatcher Desktop (TCD) and Tweetvis (TV). TCD provides a simple user interface to the Twitter API and is unique in the way that it enables users to retrieve detailed Twitter data, free-of-charge, quickly and with no programming expertise. TV provides a visual analytic platform to explore and analyse data captured by TCD by means of various unique metrics and interactive visualisations. A video demonstrating the features and functions of both tools can be viewed at These tools (TC, TCD and TV) benefitted MATCH in a number of ways. This included a number of longitudinal studies of users' medical conditions and device use leading to useful insights into problems and potential design refinements to devices. Examples include a study (in collaboration with Merck Serono) of Blood Glucose Monitoring devices and another following users suffering from Cystic Fibrosis (Brooker et al., 2014). At the end of the MATCH project we (primarily Cribbin, Barnett and Brooker) continued the work by forming the Chorus project, developing TCD as a more widely distributable alternative to the original Tweetcatcher tool that could be used by any researcher within the terms and conditions set by Twitter. The present Chorus suite (TCD & TV) has been downloaded over 4000 times since September 2013, has been explictly referenced 14 times in various book, journal, conference and report publications. It was also mentioned in a public report by the Government Communication Service as having been used by the Cabinet Office and No 10 Downing Street. Brooker, Barnett and Cribbin (MATCH RF, CI and CI resp.) have published a total of three papers together describing different applications and methodological implications of the work that began during MATCH (Brooker et al., 2016. Chorus has been applied in many subsequent projects both within Brunel and other institutions including NEMODE (Panagiotopoulos and Bowen: QMUL, funded by Defra) and various projects associated with the University of Bath, including a study investigating ways to characterise the process of online radicalisation (Smith, Barnett and Cribbin: Bath & Brunel, funded by AHRC) and the CuRAtOR project which investigated online fear and othering (Bath, Newcastle, Lincoln, funded by ESRC). Chorus has also been applied successfully to teaching activities, both at Brunel on the undergraduate Data and Information course where it has been used by students as part of the coursework since 2013 and by dissertation students and at Bath where sessions have been held for postgraduate students. Brooker, P., Barnett, J., Cribbin, T., Lang, A., & Martin, J. (2014). User-driven data capture: Locating and analysing Twitter conversation about cystic fibrosis without keywords. In SAGE Research Methods Cases. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/978144627305014526813 Brooker, P., Barnett, J., Cribbin, T., & Sharma, S. (2016). Have we even solved the first 'big data challenge?' Practical issues concerning data collection and visual representation for social media analytics. In H. Snee, C. Hine, Y. Morey, S. Roberts, & H. Watson (Eds.), Digital Methods for Social Science: An Interdisciplinary Guide to Research Innovation. Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved from http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/Digital-Methods-for-Social-Science/?sf1=barcode&st1=9781137453655 Brooker, Phillip, Barnett, J., & Cribbin, T. (2016). Doing social media analytics. Big Data & Society, 3(2), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716658060 |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | See above |
| URL | http://chorusanalytics.co.uk |
| Description | Cumberland Initiative |
| Organisation | Cumberland Initiative |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | A collaboration that has flowed from the research and the partnerships of the RIGHT and MATCH projects. Cumberland is a partnership of Clinicians, companies and universities. The value will flow from changes in the healthcare system. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Brunel has led a collaboration that has won a couple of small (<£100k) contracts to undertake improvement in healthcare processes. It has also run two Festivals of evidence, established a website (Cumberland-initiative.org) and has established a centre in Slough. Since 2013, it has moved to a subscription model, where doctors join through their fellowships at the Faculty for Medical leadership and Management, companies sign up and universities sign up. The Cumberland Initiative has run two Festivals of Evidence, a set of overnight workshops and more recently is working on providing training through 6 one-day workshops. |
| Impact | Simulation and modelling Design Engineering Systems Engineering Medicine Healthcare provision Business |
| Start Year | 2010 |
| Company Name | HecoAnalytics |
| Description | The company has developed a platform, under an Innovate UK grant to make it easier to implement some of the MATCH value-for-money calculations. It has two directors, who are being remunerated in terms of equity, as far as I understand it. Brunel set up the company. I am not a shareholder. |
| Year Established | 2016 |
| Impact | Too early to say |