EU awards Kingston University £500,000 for mobile healthcare project

Posted Thursday 27 February 2014

Shereen El-Nabhani and Barbara Pierscionek The Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing has received a major EU grant worth more than £500,000 to investigate how mobile health and wireless technologies can be used to monitor patients with multiple chronic diseases. The work is expected to have a major impact on healthcare.

The WELCOME project brings together 12 European partners to develop healthcare via new integrated health pathways and mobile and smart cloud computing for patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and co-morbidities such as diabetes, congestive heart failure and anxiety.

Barbara Pierscionek, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing's associate dean Research and Enterprise, said: "This is a splendid example of multidisciplinary research that is well aligned to a key national priority and an internationally recognised need – healthcare in an ageing society."

The Kingston investigators are Shereen El-Nabhani, Reem Kayyali, Nada Philip and Barbara Pierscionek and they bring a broad range of skills and experience to the project, encompassing clinical, scientific and technical knowledge in pharmacy, computing, gerontology, optics and biochemistry.

Dr Philip is a senior lecturer in the School of Computing and Information Systems. She said that that the multidisciplinary nature of mobile health meant that team work would be fundamental to the project's success. "The project is the result of many years' hard work with my colleagues at the Pharmacy School," she said, adding that, "mobile health is a multidisciplinary area and the main success recipe of any project in mobile health is the effective team work co-operation between mainly the clinical and the technological part of the team."

Nada Philip and Reem Kayyali Reem Kayyali, associate professor in the School of Pharmacy and Chemistry, said it was a privilege to be working on the WELCOME project with "business managers, IT specialists, consultants, nurses, physiotherapists, and pharmacists (like myself) to provide evidence of how innovative telehealth can act as a conduit to provide integrated, streamlined and personalised healthcare for patients".

The project provides a real boost for pharmacists, added Shereen El-Nabhani, also from the School of Pharmacy and Chemistry: "Our involvement in such a huge European research project embodies national efforts to push and support pharmacists to be actively engaged in research".

The total value of the award is €8,272,000, with €631,351 for Kingston University. The project will run for 48 months.

Categories: Research, Staff