Oxford Health BRC Researchers from the Universities of Birmingham, Oxford, Reading and Surrey met in Guildford on 1 July to tour the sleep facilities and discuss sleep technologies.
At the meeting there was commitment to:
- Developing additional cross -disciplinary and Theme collaborations
- Sharing expertise and facilities (including promoting training opportunities)
- Harmonising protocols
- Agreeing a minimal set of sleep measures to be collected for sleep studies to facilitate data sharing
The Clinical Research Building at the University of Surrey hosted an Oxford Health BRC Open Day which included tours of the facilities, demonstrations and a poster session.
Representatives from the Brain Technologies, Better Sleep, Dementia and Pain Themes delivered presentations focusing on the work being undertaken as well as highlighting opportunities for new collaborative sleep studies across Themes and disciplines.
Key messages included:
- The opportunity to take advantage of BRC funding to design new sleep studies that utilise the state-of-the art sleep and imaging facilities available in the BRC partners;
- The focus on developing, testing and using experience to exploit technical innovations in for example wearables;
- The advantages of using mathematical modelling to generate testable hypotheses;
- A focus on consensus building around standardisation and harmonisation that would lead to agreement of common devices, and a minimal data set that could be used for sleep measurements and hence facilitate data sharing
- A commitment to training that would allow BRC researchers to spend time in partner organisations.
There was enthusiasm for holding further Open Days in the future with the University of Birmingham expressing an interest to host the next event.
For further information on the facilities, collaborative opportunities and capabilities at the University of Surrey please contact:
Professor Derk-Jan Dijk, Professor Simon Archer or Professor Anne Skeldon.
