How we will work.

This multidisciplinary network brings together a range of stakeholders, including academic researchers, technicians, healthcare practitioners, patient representatives, and industry. It consists of a core membership of clinical and technical experts from the rehabilitation field, alongside patient representatives sharing their lived experience of conditions and rehabilitation. The Network also seeks to introduce researchers who are not typically involved in rehabilitation research, but who have potentially transformative technologies and materials, into the rehabilitation technology community.

New research opportunities will be identified through consideration of the most pressing clinical need, combined with identifying novel technologies and materials that are likely to have a transformative impact in the rehabilitation field.

The network will consider both physical and mental rehabilitation, including multimorbidity.

Central to the network will be a series of Grand Challenge Blended Workshops and supported conversations designed to identify critical areas for research, with funding for feasibility projects to build those collaborations and drive forward innovation.

Projects will be supported by and feed into the facilities and expertise at The National Rehabilitation Centre. This will provide UK engineering and physical science research with a direct route into a major NHS national programme, creating a Centre of Excellence in an area of significant and timely global importance.