Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

In the UK one in two people are diagnosed with cancer during their lifetimes and of those who survive 41% can attribute their cure to a treatment including radiotherapy. Proton beam therapy (PBT) is a radical new type of radiotherapy, capable of delivering a targeted tumour dose with minimal damage to the surrounding healthy tissue. The NHS is investing £250m in two new "state of the art" PBT centres in London and Manchester. In addition, Oxford has attracted £110m (from HEFCE and business partners) for its new Centre for Precision Cancer Medicine, incorporating PBT. This EPSRC Network+ proposal seeks to bring the EPS community together with clinical, consumer and industrial partners and develop a national research infrastructure and roadmap in proton therapy. It capitalises on ~£300m of government investment and affords an opportunity for those not directly involved in the new proton centres to be actively involved in the national research effort in this area. This project has the backing of NCRI Clinical and Translational Radiotherapy Working Group and NHS England and will work with the national Proton Physics Research and Implementation Group of the National Physical Laboratory. It also involves industrial stakeholders, consumer groups and international partners (including PBT centres in Europe and USA and CERN). While PBT offers patients many advantages it also presents a wealth of technical challenges and opportunities where there is an unmet research and training need. This is where there the involvement of the EPS community is vital since this challenge in Healthcare Technologies requires expertise from across the EPS spectrum and maps on to themes in ICT, Digital Economy, Engineering, Mathematics, Manufacturing the Future, and the Physical Sciences and also finds synergies within quantum technologies. It directly maps onto the cross cutting capabilities identified in the Healthcare Technologies Grand Challenges. This is a highly multi-disciplinary area at the frontiers of physical intervention, which achieves high precision treatment with minimal invasiveness. This Network+ is particularly timely; it will afford the UK the opportunity to develop a world-leading research capability to inform the national agenda, capitalising on existing research excellence and the synergies that can be developed by bringing the clinical and EPS areas together. It will also collaborate with existing doctoral training provision to train the next generation of leaders where a national need has been identified. This proposed Network+ will create a national infrastructure to meet a national research and training need and will allow the UK community to work together in the multi-disciplinary field of proton research. This proposed Network+ will create a sustainable national proton beam infrastructure by drawing together sites where proton beams are already available (albeit at lower energies) and providing a route for the research community to access these facilities. As the new proton centres come on line they will add to this national resource and the centres will work together to provide a virtual national infrastructure for the UK, which by the end of the Network+ will be fully sustainable. The Network+ will also provide a route for those interested in the field but not requiring proton experiments to become involved. In addition, the Network+ will offer secondments ("Discipline Hops") into the clinical environment in both the UK and in PBT centres overseas. Working with NHS England the Network+ will develop a PBT training scheme. This will link the existing NHS provision with EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training and allow equivalencies to be established and so provide a "fast track" to a skilled workforce and the next generation of leaders. The Network+ will also seek to engage with industry through joint research and secondments and with consumer groups, policy makers and the general public.

Many hospital trusts and other healthcare organisations have invested in arts programmes, via the installation of art works in hospital spaces, artist residencies and the development of enrichment activities such as dog patting and music workshops. Research has shown that these interventions have a positive effect on patient wellbeing, including mental health, anxiety, pain intensity, need for medication and length of stay in hospital. The research has also shown a positive effect for staff training and development. To date there has been no research regarding the potential benefits of providing access to collections in hospitals, despite the fact that the majority of museums have active outreach programmes and are vigorously encouraged to widen access to their collections, particularly for excluded audiences. \nThe aim of this research is to understand the potential and value of taking handling collections from museums, libraries and archives into hospitals and other healthcare organisations, such as care homes. Preliminary research begun at University College London Hospital by the applicants, has shown that object handling sessions resulted in an increase in patient wellbeing and patient's perception of their health status. Further, that patients felt positive about the role of object handling sessions as a distraction from everyday ward life and sessions have a positive impact on relationships amongst staff and patients. Importantly the pilot research has highlighted the deep emotional responses evoked in hospitalised patients handling museum objects. Whilst this may be highly beneficial, the full psychological impact on patients and professionals leading the sessions needs to be carefully assessed.\nThe main objective of the research is to develop an effective and robust protocol for heritage engagement with health, based on thorough research. The protocol will include guidelines for best practice, examples of effective session development and delivery, and guidance on establishing new relationships with healthcare organisations. The research will fully evaluate the psychological and physical impact of object handling on patients, including the role of such sessions on staff and those individuals delivering sessions. Research Assistants will collect, analyse and evaluate data obtained from handling session and will address questions such as: How do different patients respond to handling sessions? Are there trends in which type of objects are preferred in handling? Do differences in the profession of the individual leading the session affect the outcomes? What intrinsic factors are important in the development and delivery of an effective object handling session? \nA freelance artist will explore the creative element of patient object handling sessions. Working with patients, relatives, volunteers, hospital and heritage staff the artist will interpret the research for a broader audience seeking to promote the positive benefits of object handling. This aspect of the research will result in material developed by the artist for exhibitions and displays, culminating in virtual on-line exhibitions, accessible via the project website. The artist will address the question: What are the creative outcomes of heritage enrichment in hospitals?\nData from a variety of institutions from across the UK will be used to gain an overview of the role of object handling. Seven partner organisations including The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, hospitals, a national museum, plus local authority, university and independent museums, libraries and archive services will provide data and information from sessions conducted at regional hospitals and other healthcare organisations. Using a standard methodology to be developed by the project team, partners will work closely with the Research Assistants and Artist to collate data and establish a broad view of the potential, value and benefits of embedding heritage in healthcare.

The potential for rapid, computer assisted diagnostics and high precision, automated treatments, coupled with ever increasing patient numbers imposes big demands on healthcare technology. Image directed healthcare is a key component; the challenge is to develop faster, better, smarter technologies leading to optimised and application-specific information, rapid and reliable decision making and automated operation. X-ray imaging technology is widely used and heavily relied upon in many diagnostic and therapy departments to make major decisions. Yet the commercially available technology is basic and has limited capability; indirect phosphor plates and amorphous silicon imagers form the vast majority of commercial, clinical systems. CMOS technology is starting to come through but again with very basic capability and offer little more than film except digital convenience, often at lower image quality. This proposal aims to exploit the latest advances in smart CMOS imaging technology developed at the STFC Rutherford Appleton lab to make component sensors for next generation imaging directed healthcare. The developed technology is a high resolution, high speed, adaptive, radiation hard, x-ray imaging sensor for the clinic. An x-ray imaging sensor capable of producing high frame rate, high quality images with a radiation hard technology has application in a variety of clinical applications. Such technology could potentially replace digital radiographic panels in radiology (amorphous silicon and phosphor plate), flat plane imagers in radiotherapy and image intensifiers in x-ray fluoroscopy. In each case end-users would benefit from a step change in both image quality (resulting from reduced noise, smaller pixels and higher dynamic range) and dynamic imaging capability (resulting from far superior read out / frame rates) as well as added capability and integration (resulting from Active Pixel Sensor technology and on-line processing). In the field of cancer management these properties lead to superior tumour delineation, increased 4D image quality for managing organ motion and real-time integration between the imager and the linac to enable genuine adaptive therapies. University College London and the National Physical Laboratory will evaluate and exploit the benefits of the Rutherford Appleton Lab technology in three important yet diverse areas of medical imaging: cone beat CT imaging in the radiotherapy treatment room, managing organ motion during a radiotherapy lung cancer treatment and dual energy x-ray CT. The latter is in collaboration with National Physical Laboratory.