Foot ulcer prevention in diabetes

This draws on the expertise of Dr Daniel Parker and Dr Yeliz Prior and our interests in health behaviour models and digital interventions. The work will also support PhD students from the Centre for Doctoral Training in Prosthetics and Orthotics.

Work on the prevention of diabetes related foot ulcers is underpinned by a long standing partnership with North Manchester Diabetes Centre, and co funding of a Research Fellowship held by Simba Tanyanyiwa. He is leading research on the detection of sub clinical neuropathy in practice, an early marker of ulceration risk.

We are part of the Greater Manchester role within the global “Cities changing diabetes” programme. Here we work alongside Prof Neil Reeves of Manchester Metropolitan University in mapping diabetes related lower limb research across Greater Manchester, and establishing future research priorities. This links directly into regional strategies associated with reducing amputation rates thorough the MARS project.

Central to our work is building digital infrastructure to measure, monitor and respond to changes in health need. For example, we are currently developing dashboard systems for better monitoring of live foot ulcer cases, to help guide clinical practice and service design.

In our NIHR i4i funded project (starting 2021) we are working with Prof Liudi Jiang from Southampton to enable long term digital monitoring of the 3D forces under the foot during physical activity. Data from sensors under the foot will be used to provide detailed and personalised advice to individual patients at risk of foot ulceration.

Team: Prof Chris Nester, Simba Tanyanyiwa, Dr Daniel Parker, Dr Yeliz Prior, Prof Dang (North Manchester Diabetes Centre)