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The pedagogic research undertaken by the School of Law has produced an ambitious and innovative model of clinical legal education: the in-house live client model, which offers a university-based free legal service offering full representation to private clients and NGOs in the form of the Student Law Office. The Student Law Office integrates supervised legal service in the law curriculum, thereby delivering free access to justice to the wider community whilst benefiting the learning environment. Impact is three-fold:
Anxiety before dental procedures is common in children, and is usually managed by conscious sedation of the patient. Previously, nitrous oxide inhalation was the only method widely used in primary care, so patients who could not be thus sedated were referred for general anaesthesia. In 2010, NICE published the first national guideline on medical sedation, which states that administration of midazolam should be considered alongside the standard technique of nitrous oxide inhalation for sedation of children. That recommendation is based on robust evidence, the majority of which came from a series of randomised controlled clinical trials carried out by researchers at Newcastle University. Midazolam is now deployed as a second-line sedation option across the UK.
The Variable Life-Adjusted Display (VLAD) is a graphical tool for monitoring clinical outcomes. It has been widely adopted by UK cardiac surgery centres, and has helped a shift in culture towards more open outcome assessment in adult cardiac surgery, which has been credited with reduced mortality rates. VLAD is also being used for a broad range of other clinical outcomes by regulatory bodies worldwide. For example, Queensland Health uses VLAD as a major part of its Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Service to monitor 34 outcomes across 64 public hospitals, and NHS Blood and Transplant uses VLAD to monitor early outcomes of all UK transplants.
The way in which UK upland hay meadows are managed and restored to conserve botanical diversity has been largely determined by research carried out at Newcastle University. Increased post-war agricultural production has converted most species-rich upland hay meadows to species- poor rye-grass grassland so that today only 1070 ha (hectares) undisturbed hay meadow remains. The Newcastle research has been used by Natural England (an executive non-departmental public body responsible for England's natural environment) to produce targeted management prescriptions for 2500 ha of farmland in northern England and has informed National Park and AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) management on best practice for successful restoration of hay meadows. The research has ensured the successful restoration of more than half of the remaining upland hay meadows in England.
Ongoing research by the University of Southampton has led to significant advances in the understanding of respiratory diseases, for which the dearth of available treatments had health repercussions on a global scale for many years. The formation of a spin-out company, Synairgen, has enabled the discovery and development of new therapeutics, the filing of several major patents in the UK, the US and Asia and external collaborations with industry and government funders. These continuing developments are key to tackling conditions that affect millions of sufferers in the UK alone and which, according to some estimates, cost the NHS £2.6bn every year. The research has given rise to more than £16m in follow-on funding from the NIHR and the MRC for further studies into the treatment of respiratory illnesses.
BRITEST is a global leader in the development of innovative process solutions for the chemical processing sector with > £500m of value being realized since 2008. Research in Manchester (1997-2000) generated a set of novel tools and methodologies which analyse chemical processes to identify where and how process improvements could be made. BRITEST was established in 2001 as a not-for-profit company to manage the technology transfer and effective deployment of these tools and methodologies into industry. Manchester holds the IP arising from the underpinning research and has granted an exclusive license to BRITEST for use and exploitation of the toolkit.
The research team at Bucks New University has provided the groundwork for a number of applications to use cardiac power output as a novel functional measurement in the clinical evaluation of patients with heart failure and other related diseases. It involved validating the measure, assessing its reliability and applying it to a group of patients with end-stage heart failure. The success of this procedure is now evidenced by the number of national and international clinical centres adopting cardiac power output as a key functional measurement.
The History Department's Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture (CSCC) employed its research expertise in religious history to improve the understanding and sustainability of historic churches and cathedrals. These together form England's largest single 'estate' of built heritage with over 11 million visitors each year. From 2008 the Centre developed an extensive programme of national partnerships, which have led to significant and wide-reaching impact:
(i) creating new aids to help visitors engage with sacred sites
(ii) encouraging tourism and enhancing access to these national and international heritage sites for people from all cultural and faith backgrounds
(iii) delivering professional development activities for clergy, lay leaders, church architects, diocesan staff, heritage staff and volunteers
Research produced at Northumbria on migration to and from Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has enriched the presentation and understanding of cultural heritage and public discourse in the North East of England and in South Carolina. It has contributed to the creation of:
1) a permanent exhibit at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle
2) a series on Englishness at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle
3) an exhibition in Charleston, South Carolina that will become the first permanent digital exhibition in the Lowcountry Digital Archive
This research has shaped the cultural sector's historical understanding of the role played by migration on English and Irish identity and resulted in more durable collaborations between history at Northumbria and public history practitioners.
The preserved remains of an ancient human body, familiarly dubbed `Lindow Man', are among the British Museum's most celebrated exhibits. For over 20 years, Lindow Man was presented as a victim of a highly ritualised killing and as compelling evidence that human sacrifice was practised in ancient Britain. This conditioned not merely popular views of the British past but also attitudes to religious pluralism in the present. Professor Ronald Hutton's research resulted in a fundamental alteration of the display, to one encouraging a multiplicity of interpretations and so more tolerant attitudes. The exhibit was radically changed when it was loaned to the Museum of Manchester in 2008, and a new format embodying this pluralist approach was adopted when it returned to the British Museum in 2011. The much-different exhibit was seen by more than 100,000 visitors to the Museum of Manchester and is now experienced by millions of visitors to the British Museum each year.