Health in a Handbasket

Exploring the use of virtual reality and robots in healthcare, tackling phantom limb pain in amputees, advancements in phantom limb sensation research and treatment, evolution of VR prices and computer science background, journey from robot teams to Phantom Limpane project funded by Ministry of Defence, navigating a non-linear path to healthcare engineering, exploring pathways to clinical academic roles.

In this episode, Ferdouse speaks to Shoba Poduval about health inequalities among ethnic minorities – including childbirth and mental health treatment – and wonders how digital technology could help the situation. Shoba is a GP and clinical academic in UCL’s eHealth unit where she spends her time developing and evaluating digital health services. Shoba has recently completed a secondment at the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, London region - a part of the Department of Health and Social Care - where she undertook research to support the development of a strategic framework for addressing ethnic health inequalities through an anti-racist health lens.For more information and to access the transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/healthcare-engineering/health-handbasket-podcastDate of episode recording: 2023-07-19Duration: 00:30:09Language of episode: EnglishPresenter: Ferdouse AkhterGuests: Shoba PoduvalProducer: Cerys Bradley; Alice Hardy 

Ken Li is an Associate Professor looking at technology you can use to manage diabetes. He's currently creating a sort of artificial pancreas to help those with diabetes lead less stressful and anxious lives. We're joined in this episode by Melissa Connolly who tells us what life is like as a diabetic and how the device Ken is creating will change her life.For more information and to access the transcript:  https://www.ucl.ac.uk/healthcare-engineering/health-handbasket-episode-3-pumping-life-future-diabetes-managementDate of episode recording: 2023-06-14Duration: 27:33:00Language of episode: EnglishPresenter:Ferdouse AkhterGuests: Ken Li, Melissa ConnollyProducer: Alice Hardy, Cerys Bradley

AI is starting to play a part in our every day lives - it's there when we unlock our phones with Face ID or we use ChatGPT and other variations. But how can we use AI in healthcare, safely? Peter Woodward-Court is using AI to help radiologists diagnose patients from scans. He'll be covering what AI is, how it works and how we can use it safely. About Peter Woodward-Court: Peter is a medical doctor and PhD student in machine learning. He will explain what machine learning actually is, in a way we can all understand. Machine learning requires lots of training data to ‘learn’. But this real-life data can be hard to get hold of for a number of reasons. Peter’s research involves developing synthetic data to train machine learning models which can help diagnose medical conditions - making life easier for doctors and patients.For more information and to access the transcript: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/healthcare-engineering/health-handbasket-episode-2-will-ai-replace-doctors Date of episode recording: 2023-06-05 Duration: 24:27:00Language of episode: EnglishPresenter:Ferdouse AkhterGuests: Peter Woodward-CourtProducer: Alice Hardy; Cerys Bradley

When was the last time you gave any thought to your sense of smell? Smell plays a vital role in our physical and mental health - from our enjoyment of food and perfume to our ability to detect smoke or gas. A decline in our sense of smell is associated with cognitive decline, BUT there might be things we can do to prevent this happening and train our sense of smell. Giada Brianza is developing a smell training device that could help people track and develop their smell abilities over time. For more information and to access the transcript:  https://www.ucl.ac.uk/healthcare-engineering/health-handbasket-episode-1-how-underrated-our-sense-smell Date of episode recording: 2023-06-07Duration: 00:30:07Language of episode: EnglishPresenter:Ferdouse AkhterGuests: Giada BrianzaProducer: Cerys Bradley; Alice Hardy