Find out more about past research projects:
James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership; Paediatric Lower Limb Surgery Group
The JLA process brings patients, carers and clinicians to work together to:
- Identify unanswered questions about treatment options for children who present with bone and joint conditions affecting the lower limb
- Prioritise research questions
- Produce a ‘top ten’ list of agreed research priorities
Further information on this exciting project can be found here.
Starworks Innovation Project
Starworks is the young people’s prosthetics research collaboration, bringing children and their families together with key opinion leaders from the NHS, Industry, Clinical Academia and leading National Research Centres with capabilities in child prosthetics.
The project is funded by the Department of Health and has built a collaboration which aims to increase research across the system to help turn ideas around improving child prosthetics into ‘real world’ innovations for everyday use.
Steps participated in a the ‘sandpit’ events, aimed at producing ideas for ‘proof of concept’ funding, to develop new and innovative ideas. Steps were part of a successful team, awarded ‘proof of concept funding’ for the project below;
A novel Socket Interface Monitoring System (SIMS) to guide socket fitting for growth in lower limb child amputees
The high growth rate of children means that children who have lower limb loss also require prosthetics that can match their rate of growth. This creates a significant problem as it means that a “new” socket might be needed very often, just like children go through many pairs of school shoes due to growth spurts. Once a prosthetic socket is fitted to a child, it may soon be too small, and if left unaddressed may lead to skeletal development problems. This project aims to develop a system called SIMS (socket interface monitoring system), which will use a system of sensors in the socket and a smartphone app to help identify the correct time for socket adjustments. The aim is to help ensure children always have good fitting and comfortable prosthesis so that they can participate fully in normal lives and most importantly have fun!
Project lead: Professor Liudi Jiang
Expected start and end date of the project: March 2018 to December 2018
For more information, please contact: l.jiang@soton.ac.uk
Further information on this exciting project can be found here.