Wednesday 20 July 2016

Professor Mark Hawley, Director of CATCH features in the current edition of the University of Sheffield’s Discover magazine


Speaking to the publication, Professor Hawley shared the centre’s aims: “Our goal is to help older people, people with disabilities and people with long-term health conditions to help themselves through the use of carefully designed and relevant technology,”

In order to achieve this goal, Professor Hawley takes us through how CATCH works with partners to develop these technologies. “What we specialise in is working with people who are eventually going to use these technologies so they can shape and influence the design of it. That way you get a product which is far more useable by them and is tailored to their needs as opposed to something that the technologist thinks is a great idea.”

Giving the reader a glimpse of the centre’s valuable work, Mark talks about the innovative research team that’s helping people to live independently and be able to self-manage their conditions through user friendly technology.

One current project developing a new assistive technology in the form of an app is explored in the article: “One such development is helping people with neurological disorders who have lost the ability to speak clearly. We are working on a computer program that uses speech recognition technology tailored to an individual, it understands what is being said when they try to speak and interprets this before speaking out a clearer version.” CATCH is currently working to get this technology commercialised. Find out more about the VIVOCA project on our website.

The Centre for Assistive Technology and Connected Healthcare (CATCH) brings healthcare scientists, engineers, psychologists, computer scientists, architects, and social scientists together in a creative hub that is changing lives for the better.

For more information about CATCH or information related to this article, please contact Laura Murray.

To discover other issues of the Discover Magazine please visit this website: Research at Sheffield Website

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