A
CATCH project team was amongst the nine Sheffield Smart Lab winners that were announced
at an awards ceremony in Sheffield. The CATCH project team that was successful
was Novel Assessment of Nutrition and Ageing or NANA for short. NANA, led by
CATCH academics Prof Arlene Astell and Dr Liz Williams, is a system that
monitors the nutritional intake and cognitive function, mood and activity of
older adults.
The winning ideas
are set to change the way in which Sheffield tackles some of its everyday
challenges and build an intelligent city.
Earlier this year,
the Sheffield Smart Lab initiative – a partnership between Sheffield City Council, Amey
and Centre of Excellence for Cities by Ferrovial Services – invited
entrepreneurs and start-up businesses to submit innovative ideas that would
help to address two different challenges: how to energise the city centre and
how to support people to live independently.
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| Dr Liz Williams and Prof Arlene Astell accept their award |
NANA is an easy to
use touch screen assessment system for older adults. It was developed in
partnership with older adults as a way for them to keep track of what they are
eating and drinking. NANA also collects information on a person’s cognitive
function, mood and physical activity to provide a holistic picture of their
well-being. NANA has been developed for daily use by older people living in the
community and validated against current gold standard measures.
The information
collected by NANA is as good as any current pen and paper measures and has the
advantage that collecting information every day can provide early detection of
changes in a person’s eating behaviour, cognitive function, mood or physical
activity. In addition to early detection, NANA’s daily assessment can provide a
means of monitoring the impact of an intervention by providing information to
the older person, their family and health and social care professionals.
Prof Arlene Astell
was thrilled that NANA is included amongst the nine successful teams. She
commented that “This award will give us access to Sheffield Council social care
services and their users to gain real-world feedback on NANA and how it would
be used by these services. This will help us to convert NANA from a research
tool to a commercially attractive product.”
Cllr Leigh Bramall,
Deputy Leader & Cabinet Member for Business, Skills and Development said
“As a council, it is important to us that we drive innovation to Sheffield.
There’s an energy and appetite for it in the city and we recognise that in
order to do this we need to partner with start-ups and innovators. That’s what
Sheffield Smart Lab is all about and by attracting entrepreneurs we can support
and help them to build on their ideas, making them a reality, benefiting both
them and the city.
The challenges that
the solutions solve are hugely important to Sheffield and this gives us a great
opportunity to offer a better quality of life for the people of Sheffield and
attract visitors to the city centre.”
Nick Gregg, Amey’s
Local Government Managing Director, said: “Well done to the nine teams that
have been shortlisted. Over 50 innovative ideas were received after the launch
in June and I’m confident that the solutions that have been selected could make
a big difference to the city of Sheffield. By bringing the use of technology to
the city in an innovative way, we can enhance the services that we already
offer and improve the quality of life for both residents and visitors.
“I’m looking
forward to watching the selected solutions progress during the next phase of
the initiative and seeing how they can contribute to the development of
Sheffield.”
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