APPROACH
Head injury is the commonest cause of death and disability in people aged 1-40 years in the UK. Each year, 1.4 million people attend emergency departments in England and Wales with a recent head injury. Between 33% and 50% of these are children aged under 15 years (NICE Guidance on Head Injury: Assessment and Early Management: 2017). This lead to a range of disabilities including complete dependency and vegetative state. Even mild injuries may result in significant cognitive and emotional disability with implications for return to work and family harmony.
The NIHR Brain Injury MedTech Co-operative (MIC) works with patients, carers, NHS, charities, academia, inventors, SMEs and business angels to support the development of new medical devices and healthcare technologies improving the effectiveness and quality of healthcare services in the brain injury care pathway.
The NIHR Brain Injury MIC aims to Find, Facilitate and Foster ideas for early stage evaluation to meet the needs of those who have been affected by brain injury. The figure below sets out the MIC activities to support its aims:
The NIHR Brain Injury MIC seeks to be a centre of expertise in the development of medical technologies to support the prevention of, or improved patient outcomes from, an Acquired or Traumatic Brain Injury.
To this purpose, the MIC’s approach is structured and delivered through eleven different clinical theme areas:
- Prevention and Pre-Hospital – Professor Mark Wilson
- Neurocritical Care – Professor David Menon
- Multi-Modality Monitoring – Mr Adel Helmy / Dr Keri Carpenter
- Functional Neuroimaging and Neurophysiology – Professor Franklin Aigbirhio
- Neuro-oncology – Mr Stephen Price
- Regenerative Neuroscience – Dr Mark Kotter
- Paediatrics and Neuro-development – Professor David Rowitch & Professor Topun Austin
- Neurorehabilitation – Professor Valerie M Pomeroy
- Cognition and Mental Health – Professor Barbara J Sahakian
- Neuropsychological Rehabilitation – Dr Andrew Bateman
- Intracranial Pressure and Shunt Technology – Professor Marek Czosnyka & Dr Peter Smielewski
In addition to clinical themes, the MIC approach is also applied to four core activities:
- Patient and Public Involvement – Professor Christi Deaton
- MedTech Regulation and Evaluation – Dr Peter Jarritt
- Clinical Informatics and Registries – Mr Alexis Joannides
- Internationalisation and Health Economics – Prof John Pickard
The NIHR Brain Injury MedTech Co-operative will build on the significant achievement of the NIHR Brain Injury Healthcare Technology Co-operative (HTC)
