One of our staff members, Professor Daniel Freeman, is leading a landmark £4 million National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) award to enable state-of-the-art psychological therapy to be delivered via virtual reality (VR) in the NHS.
The ground-breaking project brings together a unique team of NHS trusts (including Oxford Health), universities, a mental health charity, the Royal College of Art, and a University of Oxford spinout company.
The Automated Sensing and Predictive Inference for Respiratory Exacerbation (ASPIRE) programme, which aims to help patients monitor chronic pulmonary disorder (COPD) , will receive a £1.5 million grant from the government’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
The ASPIRE programme aims to develop ‘intelligent’ systems for people to use in their own homes, by wearing lightweight healthcare sensors that can track vital signs. These systems can then monitor COPD signs and symptoms in their own homes, spotting when the condition is worsening early on: delays in spotting changes in long-term conditions like COPD are bad for patients, and increase the cost of their healthcare.
"An innovative new app might provide a more effective form of birth control than the contraceptive pill," The Sun reports.
The Natural Cycles fertility app combines the use of a thermometer to measure body temperature with calendar calculating methods – often referred to as the rhythm method – to work out the days when a woman would be at high or low risk of pregnancy.
More than 4,000 women were included in this Swedish study looking at how effective the app is at preventing pregnancy.
Two £25 vouchers are up for grabs in the library’s ‘Making the Most of Information’ survey.
To take part, just visit http://goo.gl/AdN4ok by Friday 19th February.
There are well over 150 000 health apps available in Europe1—from those designed to improve general wellness to apps that monitor medical conditions, apps for clinicians, and apps that function as medical devices. There have been more than 102 billion down-loads of health apps worldwide yet there is little regulation or guidance available for doctors or patients on quality, safety, or efficacy.
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The majority of content in an Internet Support Group (ISG) is contributed by 1 % of the users (‘super users’). Computational methods, such as topic modelling, can provide a large-scale quantitative objective description of this content. Such methods may provide a new perspective on the nature of engagement on ISGs including the role of super users and their possible effect on other users.