5 NAMRIP projects win EPSRC Impact Acceleration funding awards
Five of NAMRIP's research projects have been selected from a competition to receive funds from EPSRC's Impact Acceleration Account, which funds research that has proved especially fruitful and promises to have significant impact. The impact must be of significant benefit to society, for example in terms of improving services, enhancing commercial activities, building or enhancing business, creating jobs or products and shaping policy.
The five successful NAMRIP research innovations were:
- Ultrasonic cleaning
- Ultrasound treatment of chronic infections
- Microguide
- Mapping microbes
- 3D Printing of shoes for cattle and horses.
The funds will enable NAMRIP's ultrasonic cleaning products (StarStream and StarGlider) to be tested in hospitals, veterinary practices, GP practices and abattoirs to test their abilities for infection prevention.
The team researching ultrasonic treatment of chronic infections, working alongside Public Health England, will now be able to develop ultrasonic microdevices to more effectively deliver drugs through biofilms, in the treatment of chronic wounds such as diabetic foot ulcers.
Microguide will benefit from the opportunity to advance as a product, incorporating patient profiling thus making it even better for doctors when thay are tailoring antibiotic treatment recommendations to individual patient circumstances.
The funds willl allow the Mapping Microbes team to produce training materials for the NHS on how practices by staff on hospital wards can help or hinder the transmission of microbes between patients and objects, and what common activities, such as handling the daily task-sheet throughout the day, may need re-thinking as they are revealed to be sites where microbes are not routinely cleaned away; and what attitudes are and are not helpful when staff are on the ward.
The team working on 3D printable shoes for horses will now have the funds to allow for the shoes to be made for horses at a stable for retired racehorses, in a trial to reduce the use of antibiotics to treat equine lameness.