HappierFeet - Disrupting the vicious cycle of healthcare decline in Diabetic Foot Ulceration through active prevention: The future of self-managed care
Diabetic foot ulcers affect a quarter of people with diabetes, costing the NHS £1 billion annually. With a multidisciplinary research team, the HappierFeet project aims to address this significant and timely issue by co-designing, with patients, the self-managed use of smart shoe insoles.
The proposed HappierFeet smart system is intended to identify early signs of ulceration using pressure, temperature, inertial measurement units and acoustic sensors. Using actuators that convert energy into movement, they will adjust the way people walk to support safe and comfortable movement. This will encourage people prone to diabetic foot ulcers to be more active while managing their conditions securely.
This multidisciplinary approach to developing a digital healthcare solution is supported by a £400,000 grant through the research sandpits call funded by UKRI EPSRC and MRC. In this project, the Institute for Digital Technologies at the Loughborough University London is collaborating with the University of Manchester (project lead), University of Strathclyde, University of Southampton, and Oxford Brookes University, and is responsible for future proofing the security and privacy of highly sensitive user data obtained from the smart healthcare system against threats and risks of advancements in quantum computing.
This is a two-year research project, starting in September 2021, and is aligned with the Cyber Security, Trust, Identity and Privacy research theme of the IDT.
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Or contact Dr Safak Dogan.