Digital Health and Wellbeing

Digital Health and Wellbeing (DH&W) focuses on developing human-centred and accessible digital solutions to address unmet healthcare needs.

A particular emphasis is on algorithm development and digital biomarkers using wearable technologies and mobile computing to understand mechanistic (e.g., cognitive) as well as lifestyle factors in ageing (Godfrey, Alshabrawy, Rooksby, Pointon). Recognising the societal importance of this human centric approach, staff (Akhtar, Anwar, Sice, Elvin) research digital health challenges pertaining to vulnerable groups and information retrieval for decision support systems. We also research digital medicine-based topics in e.g., cancer-focused bioinformatics & functional genomics (Kurt, Woo)

Across the group we have a collaborative culture, regularly working with clinical and healthcare practitioners. Our computing science expertise is complimented by a broad spectrum of additional interests including but not limited to: wearable technology, digital biomarkers, bioinformatics, information behaviour, data mining, mental health, signalling theory and computational biology.  

Some of our partners include Parkinson’s UK, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust and Tyne, Esk and Wear Valley NHS Mental Health Trust.  

This group is a part of the University’s multi-disciplinary research into the theme of Integrated Health and Social Care as well as Human and Digital Design. 

Research from this group will be submitted to REF 2021 under UoA 11: Computer Science and Informatics. 

To view research papers emanating from this group, please navigate to our Northumbria University research portal.