Are you looking for a challenging but rewarding project to undertake in 2021?
The Knowledge Exchange Challenge Fund aims to provide funding for students across different disciplines to collaborate on projects designed to raise awareness of different possibilities in the area of digital health. Led by the University of Plymouth's Centre for Health and Technology, the Challenge Fund can be applied for by students in groups of up to four, the lead applicant must be studying in the Faculty of Health.
The University of Plymouth’s Centre for Health Technology brings together digital health and technology expertise from across the University to drive the development, evaluation and implementation of innovative technologies, products, services and approaches to transform health and social care and create an economy of wellbeing.
Read on for more information about this exciting opportunity brought to you by the Centre for Health Technology.
Aims of the Challenge Fund
We will fund up to 15 projects in which students work with community and patient groups to raise awareness of digital health possibilities, raising awareness of research expertise in the University, and getting input and ideas from the community for further research. Projects will focus on groups that are often digitally disadvantaged whether by economic deprivation, rurality, isolation, sensory impairment, ethnicity, or mental or physical health. We encourage inter-disciplinary projects engaging not only students from the Faculty of Health (nursing, medicine, dentistry, health professions, psychology), but also computing, engineering, architecture, design, robotics, digital arts and more. However, the project must be led by a Faculty of Health student.
Students will be helped by the charity Well Connected to make contact with community groups in Devon and Cornwall. In addition, in Cornwall, the EPIC project has extensive links with patient and community groups and students can be put in contact via researchers Rebecca Baines or Toni Page. The CHT academics who have oversight of this Challenge Fund are: Ray Jones, Katharine Willis, Alison Warren, Tanja Krizaj, Ian Holt, Fiona Fraser, Sally Hanks, Rebecca Reynolds, Sheena Asthana, Arunangsu Chatterjee, Sally Hanks.
Students are encouraged to work with CHT researchers and to identify research ideas and projects from their discussions with the community and patient groups. Wherever possible one outcome of the student-led project would be subsequent collaborative application for research funding to other funding bodies. If appropriate students are able to borrow equipment from the CHT digital device library.
Example Projects
Example projects might be to run online events with a patient group (eg Hearing Loss Cornwall), a community group (eg Nudge), or practice related group (eg Patient Participation Group), to discuss some aspect of digital health (eg video consultations, online triage, robot companions, the radio-me project). Other projects might be face-to-face, eg to show people (in a library, community centre or café) how to access health apps (such as Andrade’s FITZ) on a mobile phone, or to demonstrate the use of Facebook TV portal to a memory café group.
How to apply
Complete the form below and submit to ray.jones@plymouth.ac.uk by 5pm February 19th. A committee will review all applications in week beginning February 22nd and make up to 15 awards of £500 (£250 for the student team and £250 for the community or patient group). All successful projects will need to submit a summary report at the end of their project (which must be before July 9th). The award of £500 will be paid on receipt of that summary.
Criteria for assessment of applications:
- The lead applicant must be a University of Plymouth student from the Faculty of Health. There may be up to four student applicants. Credit will be given to inter-disciplinary teams.
- The project must focus on digital health/health technology and identify a link researcher from the CHT.
- The project must aim to involve people or groups in Devon or Cornwall who are often excluded from collaborative research in digital health. The application must be supported by an email/letter of support from the group.
- The proposed activity must be feasible and likely to have a successful outcome.
- The project must be completed and reported by July 14th.