Dr Claire Howard, a stroke specialist orthoptist at Salford Royal has been awarded a prestigious Advanced Clinical and Practitioner Academic Fellowship (ACAF) through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Dr Howard is one of our Clinical Research Fellows within NCA’s Centre for Clinical and Care Research (CCR) and has a clinical academic role in supporting research capacity building in our healthcare professionals.
She has been awarded £750,000 over a five-year fellowship to develop a new intervention for visual impairment caused by stroke. Her research, in collaboration with The University of Manchester, University of Liverpool, University of Oxford and a technology company Citrus Suite, will develop a smartphone application to deliver virtual reality-based training at the hospital bedside and in the community. The training will be designed with patients at the heart and will explore what is important to them and their families throughout. Once developed, the virtual reality training will be tested with patients to make sure it is easy to use.
Opportunity
Part of the fellowship will fund the work of a research assistant. This is an exciting opportunity for a healthcare professional to work alongside Dr Howard for three years and develop the outcome measures that are important to patients. This research assistant will be fully funded with backfill for their clinical post and training costs provided. This opportunity would suit any healthcare professional from any background who has a keen interest in clinical research and full funding will be provided for them to complete a PhD as part of the process. The post will be advertised in the coming months.
Dr Howard said: “Our visual field (or peripheral vision) is an important part of our ability to see the world. This research focuses on homonymous (same side) visual field loss which is a loss of field of vision in both eyes to the right or left side. This type of visual field loss affects around 30 per cent of stroke survivors. When this happens, the loss of vision is sudden. This can be frightening and cause people to bump into things and struggle to move around, read or drive.
Independence
“In most cases, people are not offered treatment due to a lack of information about what works best. My research aims to develop a new low-cost treatment for visual field loss using a standard mobile smartphone and cardboard virtual reality device, so people can do training in hospital or in their own homes as soon as possible after stroke.
“This new training has the potential to benefit thousands of people with visual field loss by improving their ability to use visual skills in their non-seeing field. This could increase their independence and help them return to their usual activities including work, reading, shopping and driving.
“I am excited to start this important work and would like to thank all my colleagues across NCA and further afield who have supported me in the application process and in obtaining this important fellowship.”