Blog

I am the Academic Director of the Global Disability Innovation Hub  (https://www.disabilityinnovation.com) which was founded on the back of the London 2012 Paralympic Games – the most successful in the history of the Games. My role in Fit for Purpose is to explore user experiences and develop better prosthetic interfaces, including activity monitoring sensing.  I lead two studies in Uganda and Jordan with the help of the brilliant Dafne Morgado-Ramirez and the Maggie Donovan-Hall. The first study is utilising wrist-worn activity monitors and ethnographic methods to understand the use or non-use of upper limb prosthetics. We also measure the context ...
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The School of Energy and Electronic Engineering at the University of Portsmouth is looking for a highly motivated Research Fellow to work on the Fit for Purpose, Affordable Body-Powered Prostheses project. This is an opportunity to work on an exciting biomedical engineering project and implement your findings with experts in Uganda and Jordan, with direct benefits to people with limb loss. Join an interdisciplinary research team of biomedical engineers, prosthetists, healthcare psychologists and social scientists working on designs of prosthetic arms in Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs).  They will work primarily with Professor Peter Kyberd in Portsmouth and Professors Laurence Kenney ...
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My clinical experience is mainly in upper limb prosthetics and at the University of Jordan I train orthotic and prosthetic students on how to fabricate prostheses for all upper limb amputation levels. However, I have been always skeptical about the functional benefit of current devices, so the exciting early work in this project offers an excellent opportunity to find out whether Jordanian amputees actually make use of their prescribed prostheses in everyday life and to understand the amputee’s perspectives of “a usable prosthesis”. We are working on these problems with the UCL, University of Southampton, University of Salford and Makerere ...
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  My background is in health psychology and I currently work as an Associate Professor in the School of Health Sciences.  I am interested in the psycho social issues related to rehabilitation and I have had a particular interest in the area of prosthetics and orthotics since completing my MSc back in 1999.  My role in this project is to ensure that the user’s needs are integrated into the development of any new prosthetic componentry.  When we are referring to the user, we do not just mean the person with limb loss, but the wider group of stakeholders that are involved ...
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The School of Energy and Electronic Engineering at the University of Portsmouth is seeking to appoint an engineer to work with Peter Kyberd on the project. The role of the engineer in Portsmouth will be to look at exploring novel approaches to the technology, aiming to realise a step change in body powered prosthesis performance. We are therefore looking for an innovative mechanical engineer with substantial experience in design and construction of small mechanisms (e.g. prosthetic hands, robot manipulators), including 3D printing and hydraulics, who has worked creatively on their own design projects. The post is based in the School ...
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We are around two weeks away from the Trent International Prosthetics Symposium  and UK ISPO/BACPAR National Members Society Annual Scientific Meeting, being held at The Lowry, here in Salford. As one of the conference Chairs, life is pretty hectic just now, but thought it worth letting you know about the project-related work being presented. On Thursday 21st March, Maggie Donovan-Hall will be presenting the user involvement work that she has been carrying out with partners in Uganda and Jordan, as well as interviews with experienced clinicians working for ICRC. The impact of Maggie’s work will be felt well beyond the ...
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About me I studied mechanical engineering at the University of Salford in the mid-1980s. Central Salford in those days was very different – the legendary Smiths were in their prime, the local coal mine was still operating, and the Salford docks (now the site of Media City) had just closed; there certainly were no trendy coffee shops or luxury flats! I stayed on to complete a PhD, then following postdoc work at Salford and a period working at Roessingh Research and Development in the Netherlands, returned in 2000 to take up a permanent post in the new health faculty. The ...
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