Category: Cohort 1

Abstract: Development of an Industrial Test Platform for Foot Health Device and Footwear Testing

Supervisors: Dr Dan Parker, Chris Nester and Guowu Wei. 

Medical devices for the foot encompass therapeutic inserts available over-the-counter such as insoles and protective pads, as well as devices prescribed by professionals, such as orthotics. The development of these devices involves new products being conceived, designed, samples being tested and validated against well-defined regulatory requirements,
before moving into production and consumer/patient use. With a large number of product development processes involving marketing, design, innovation and product delivery professionals, there exists a risk of inefficiencies. The specific risk that this project relates to is how product design decisions are made and informed by the testing of prototypes and
how results of this testing relate to regulatory and marketing requirements.
This industry-linked project aims to develop a physical test platform that can identify the initial and long-term performance of an orthotic and footwear product and the key effects of these products on the internal behaviour of the foot, so that product design decisions and regulatory and marketing concepts can be informed prior to more expensive, risker
clinical testing involving human participants.

The test platform comprises a phantom-foot and means of loading the foot similar to in-vivo. Two typical use contexts have been devised:

1. At an early innovation stage, the platform will enable new orthotic and footwear product designs to be tested efficiently with standardised methodology, using realistic loading conditions to evaluate the initial and long-term performance of the product (with regards to its purpose).
2. To assess the effects of orthotic materials or product designs on internal foot structures by measuring simulated tissue compression and stiffness under realistic in-vivo loading conditions.

My name is Victoria Patricks. I am a Nigerian . I did my undergraduate in Biomedical Engineering @ Bells University of Technology, Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria. And my final year project was on Development of Mobile Android Haemodialysis Calculator App(MAHCA) because the most common means of calculating haemodialysis quantities in a health organisation in Nigeria was the use of pen to manually calculate and obtain results. This approach was outdated and time-consuming. It was also seen to be Prone to error in a time-pressured clinic  environment and resulted to poor clinical decision-making outcomes. I developed the app to calculate creatinine clearance, dialysis clearance and make predictions on the stages of chronic kidney disease and also basic clinical renal recommendations. I recently worked in an equipment calibration firm were I got basic knowledge of calibration . and here I am doing a PHD in Prosthetics and

Title: Improving clinical rehabilitation process for lower limb using body-worn monitoring sensors.

Project Aim: To develop a system that visualises and analyses clinical information from monitoring device that would aid clinical decision-making process.

Project Objectives: 1) To develop relevant clinical outcomes from complex physical activity data and provide feedback to Prosthetists.

                                   2) To understand what information is relevant from body-worn sensors and optimally display this information

                                   3) To test that the visual system informs effective clinical decisions to aid rehabilitation and support process.

Current Problem: Did you know that an estimate of 40 million people requires prosthetic and orthotic services? Meanwhile, the current methods used to deliver these services prove to be inadequate and leads to non-compliance with devices. These existing methods are known to be subjective in nature and lack good evidence-based system. The lifecycle for the provision of prostheses services includes fitting of prosthesis, training, rehabilitation, support and repair which, are challenging to measure because clinicians lack the right tools to do it.

My research focuses on developing a system that analyses and visualises measurements from body-worn sensors which would be used to improve clinical decisions on rehabilitation and continuous support for lower-limb prosthetic users.

Monitoring technologies like body-worn sensors provide us with big data on physical behaviour and demonstrate its ability to be a Clinical Outcome Measurement Tool.

To achieve this aim, I would explore the need of obtaining information from body-worn sensors with clinicians using a semi-structured interview. The results from the interview would be analysed on NVIVO using thematic analysis.

The interpretation from the thematic analysis would be used to develop a visualisation system that analyses and visualises data obtained from body-worn sensors. I would go on to use body-worn sensors to collect physical activity data from lower-limb prosthetic users in UK and Cambodia and test the activity data on the developed visual system to improve the system further.

I would then carry out a focus group with clinicians to feedback the system features for further remodelling to suit the clinicians need. I would also feedback the activity data collected from prosthetic users to clinicians which would be used to inform effective clinical decisions on rehabilitations and patients support. Finally, I would perform the final test on the visual system by using a controlled study where information is provided to clinicians using the traditional methods versus using the visual system, to see if using the visual system would improve the rehabilitation and support processes given by the clinicians.

Supervisors: Prof. Malcolm Granat, Dr. Peter Worseley

Hobbies: Travelling,

Likes: water sports, Ping Pong (Table Tennis), writing and editing.

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Supervisor: Prof. Anthony Bull

Institution: ICL

Project: Osseointegrated (OI) prosthetics

Description: Investigating the complex mechanical constraints of OI prosthetics, to understand how they relate to mechanical failure and thus the longevity of these devices. The primary aims of the project are: 

• To quantify loading on the OI implant and the femoral bone through clinical gait analysis and MSK modelling. 
• To develop and validate an adaptive FE model that will generate failure analysis by defining the mechanical tolerance of the bone-implant system. 
• To design, build and test improved designs of a key component that look to mitigate the failure modes/issues identified.