Newcastle University to spearhead care study

NEWCASTLE University’s Business School has been selected to lead a £2m groundbreaking study into health and social care provision for the UK’s ageing population.

Prof Feng Li will lead the project which will investigate how sustainable assisted living technologies and services can help older people remain independent in their own homes for longer.

The project follows a successful funding application to the Government-backed Technology Strategy Board and the university will spend the next three years working with 10 partners from the private, public and voluntary sectors to come up with workable solutions.

Prof Li said: “Our current health and social care institutions don’t have sufficient resources or capacity to keep up with our growing ageing population.

“Demand on essential services is rapidly increasing and this is something we really need to be paying attention to.

“Unless we make some significant changes in the next decade or so there are going to be serious problems.

“However, we are fortunate to have a great deal of new digital technology at our fingertips which can create novel ways of dealing with this issue at the same time as reducing pressure on already stretched services.”

The sustainable business models the team is working on are expected to lead to new services that will save millions of pounds a year and also generate new business.