Current Project (2019-2028)

Research Team: Timothy Constandinou (UKDRI Group Leader, Bioelectronic Systems), Adrien Rapeaux, Alan Bannon, Ziwei Chen, Michael Drury,  Charalambos Hadjipanayi, Bryan Hsieh, Mei Kirby, Amir Nassibi, Maowen Yin, Niro Yogendran
Project Partners: David Sharp, Derk-Jan Dijk, Shlomi Haar, Tor Sverre Lande, Helix Centre (Care Research & Technology Centre), Tim Denison (Oxford), Amber Therapeutics Ltd, Novelda AS
Funding: UK Dementia Research Institute (UKDRI) - Medical Research Council (MRC), Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK


About Care Research & Technology (CR&T)

The Care Research & Technology Centre is one of seven Centres comprising the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI). The Centre is based at Imperial College London in partnership with the University of Surrey and the Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SABP).

Our Mission: We need to develop new ways to help people live well with dementia. We have an ageing population, limited resources for home care and no immediate cures available. All too often patients are isolated and develop preventable problems leading to unnecessary hospital admissions. New technologies hold great promise for providing solutions. We are working to focus the best minds on developing new ways of caring for people with dementia through advanced technologies.

Bioelectronic Systems for Intervention in Dementia

Our work focuses on integrating radar within the smart home infrastructure and deploys in PLWD homes to assess their health and well-being longitudinally. Our objective is to enable the observation of disease progression by providing new physiological and behavioural measurables unobtrusively at home, improving the assessment of therapeutic interventions such as pharmacological efficacy, and behavioural adjustments for sleep, and facilitating further research in dementia.

A second focus will extend our technology platform to include deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices that are routinely used in the treatment of motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease (PD). By leveraging a strategic UK partnership we will create the capability to observe brain physiology 24/7 through a next-generation DBS device integrated into the home. We will use this to explore how stimulation can be optimised across the circadian cycle to reduce daytime sleepiness and enhance vigilance whilst also maintaining the baseline therapy for motor symptoms. We expect that sensing brain activity using a networked implant will provide new insights into disease progression. Establishing this testbed in PD paves the way to then explore new bioelectronic interventions in neurodegeneration and dementia.

Publications