Micro-PADs On Call: Out of Hours Disease Monitoring and Early Diagnosis

This research project seeks a new clinical sensing platform to facilitate rapid screening, early diagnosis, effective disease monitoring, personalised treatment and better-informed referral decisions. The exemplar focus of this research project is children suffering from endocrine disorders and the pressing need for new analytical innovations to enable simple and effective disease monitoring in the community. The versatile approach proposed has great promise, beyond the exemplar, as it can be applied in a general-purpose fashion for a whole range of diseases and clinical scenarios, ultimately increasing the likelihood of successful health outcomes.

This research project will pursue disruptive technology that has potential to lead to a revolutionary sensing platform for routine clinical use. The overwhelming focus in terms of societal and economic impact relates to healthcare. The project offers an extraordinary opportunity to combine clinical expertise with technological innovation to accomplish an ambitious research project. Clinicians, as well as NIHR patient groups and potential end users (Pituitary Foundation), will be involved throughout to provide advice and feedback on design specifications, implementation and validation. The research is of direct relevance to developing a healthy nation and therefore industry, government and the public should all have a strong interest. In particular, this project can be of direct benefit to children and young people who suffer from endocrine disorders, in particular adrenal insufficiency, to enable out of hours and non-invasive disease monitoring. By effectively having micro-PADs "on call", there is significant potential to allow people to get the right care at the right time in the optimal care setting (for example, avoiding emergency hospital admissions) and ensuring both patients' time and specialists' expertise are used most appropriately. This can improve upstream prevention of avoidable illness and exacerbations. In particular, this research can enable patients, carers and volunteers to enable 'supported self-management' particularly of long-term health conditions. Outputs resulting from this work will be disseminated widely. The University is keen to support new IP that is likely to be generated (see institutional LoS) and assist in exploitation by way of developing marketable products, either through the creation of a "spin-out" company or through licensing the generated IP to appropriate companies. Further support is offered in this regard by various project partners, in particular Alder Hey Children's Hospital, LGC, Sensor City and Liverpool Health Partners (see respective LoS).