Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

A lecture by Professor Wendy Tindale, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

‘Devices for Dignity’ is a national research programme driven by the core aim of maintaining people’s independence and dignity. We work in partnership with patients, carers and the public, focusing on the needs that people tell us about and delivering innovative technology solutions to address those needs. Critical to our innovation approach is the involvement of industry, academia and the NHS, all working in collaboration. Multi-disciplinary working is key to our success and we bring together engineers, designers, materials scientists and many other experts, with users, to enable a holistic approach to problem solving.

Our focus is on four areas that are so often associated with loss of dignity and independence: urinary continence management, renal technologies, assistive and rehabilitative technologies and paediatric technologies. Projects vary from high-tech devices to simpler but vital innovations to help people live well with one or more long term conditions.

This lecture will describe the Devices for Dignity journey over the last eight years, its successes and challenges and the outputs and impacts for patients. User-led innovation will be a central theme in the presentation, brought to life through some of the challenges faced by motor neurone disease patients.

Member’s report

Dignity in healthcare can be compromised in many ways, such as lack of privacy and confidentiality, inability to communicate and damaged appearance. Patients sometimes put themselves at risk, trying to preserve their dignity.

The objective of Devices for Dignity (D4D) is to match patient need with industry skills. Central to strategy is the concept of patient-driven innovation. D4D assembles expert teams from healthcare, scientific and academic disciplines and invites members of the public register unmet needs on the D4D website from which useful projects might emerge.

Many projects involve medical engineering of prosthetics. Collaboration between the engineering sector and the NHS was limited until 2006 when the National Institute for Health Research was established. and now there are eight Healthcare Technology Co-operatives embedded in the NHS. A whole range of improved medical devices has become available.

Examples of successful projects, often resulting from patient input at the design stage, include a multi-functional paediatric chair; a digital communication toolbox; a special urinary leg-bag for kids; an early-warning monitor to detect kidney disease before any apparent symptoms; a device for improving swallowing after a stroke (rather than relying on tube feeding). A very recent development is a head and neck support for motor neurone sufferers, where drooping head is a very common symptom.

Ken Hutson