FortisNet: Musculoskeletal Health – Working in Partnership
The FortisNet community enthusiastically took part in the third annual meeting entitled Working in Partnership. This event is a special date in the Life Sciences at Southampton calendar; it provides a unique opportunity for musculoskeletal health experts to network and form collaborations for future research.
The FortisNet programme presented the collective achievements of the community as well as the current challenges in the field. There were a wide range of speakers representing clinicians, patient and public involvement in research representatives, industry and academia, from Southampton, Hampshire, Dorset, London, Sheffield, Leeds and Ireland. By popular request, there was also a technology exhibition which provided the arena for industry, stakeholders and researchers to discuss their work in greater depth.
Professor Jo Adams, Director of FortisNet said “The FortisNet network continues to grow and is producing significant achievements since its launch two years ago. This year we are focusing on growing our engagement with patient and public involvement representatives so that research collaborations include user input from first principles. This is extremely important as our aim after all is to improve lives and benefit the people whom our research is intended to serve.”
In the first two years the FortisNet network has catalysed a Fellowship, supported five PhD studentships in musculoskeletal health and 37 new collaborative projects, which have yielded a return of over 10:1 on investment. It has catalysed a Global Challenges Research Fund project and supported the commercialisation of new technologies.
The FortisNet community have leading technological capacity ranging from orthopaedics to materials science, assistive technologies, rehabilitation, prosthetics, device design, software development, epidemiology, clinical design and trials, patient and public involvement and business incubation.
For more information or to get involved with FortisNet, please contact Dr Alexandra Mant on A.Mant@soton.ac.uk +44 (0)23 8059 4441.