Pioneering research centre for later life care to be created at Edinburgh University

Improving the last 1,000 days of people’s lives and creating technology to assist elderly people living alone is to be the focus of a new £20 million research centre at the University of Edinburgh.

The centre is the first of its kind in the UK.

The Advanced Care Research Centre (ACRC), the first of its kind in the UK, will offer a seven-year multi-disciplinary research programme designed to improve understanding of care in later life and to revolutionise how it is delivered.

The centre will also include an academy that will develop a new generation of enterprise-oriented leaders in later life care through a rigorous programme of cross-disciplinary research-based training.

Researchers will pass on findings to social care providers in both the NHS and other parts of the sector.

A total of 15 new researchers will be employed to work at the centre, while 36 PhD students will be recruited over the coming years.

Professor Peter Mathieson, principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, said: “We are delighted to host this ground-breaking collaboration with colleagues at Legal & General. This exceptional partnership will re-imagine care for the mid-21st century.

“As our population ages, so we need to develop innovative new approaches to provide individually-tailored care. This is the big challenge that the partners will address, bringing to bear pioneering research from the brightest academic minds across multiple disciplines to deliver creative and trusted solutions to address real world problems.”

The partnership with financial services firm Legal & General marks the University’s largest industry investment, as part of the £661m Data-Driven Innovation initiative within the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal.

Bruce Guthrie, director of the centre, said that he hoped to develop other routes of funding to further expand the centre and continue it beyond the initial seven years. There are more than 12 million over-65s in the UK and this figure is expected to increase by 50 per cent over the next 20 years.

He said: “We have a population that is getting older which is happening in all countries across the world. Our life expectancy is growing faster than the amount of time we spend in good health.We initially will focus on the last 1,000 days of life. Almost everybody has experience of older relatives who are not quite as mobile as they were, or as sharp and we will carry out a research programme to understand what this looks like for people in this state.”

He said researchers would look at using technology and data to improve care for older people.

He said: “We will be looking at ways of detecting where people have a fall if they are living alone, or ways of detecting if someone is becoming ill so you can intervene early.“We can only revolutionise care by working with the NHS and social care. The intention is to start developing technologies and this would be implemented and evaluate in real life care and decide if they work.”

Dr Nigel Wilson, group chief executive of Legal & General, said: “Establishing the ACRC will revolutionise the UK’s commitment to understanding and addressing the huge issue of demographic change – part of a global challenge with significant social and economic impacts.

“Edinburgh’s academic-led, data-based and cross-disciplinary approach will deliver vital positive change to ageing and care and we find this a compelling and practical vision.”

He added: “The partnerships we are forging with premier institutions up and down the country, from the University of Oxford and Newcastle, to Bath University, UCL and now Edinburgh will help shift the dial in the delivery of science, technology and ageing care for many future generations to come.”