Prevention

There is increasing recognition of the importance of preventative healthcare that averts the need for emotionally and physically burdensome, costly and sometimes unsuccessful intervention. Researchers at UCL are engineering technologies to support this shift, ranging from wearable devices that encourage individuals to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle through to bioprocessing and manufacturing methods that enable widespread, affordable vaccination. 

At a more fundamental level, scientists are working to understand the precise causes and processes behind diseases in an effort to eventually prevent them. Our improved understanding of people’s specific genetic make-up can provide insight into risk of disease and best prevention methods, whilst advanced computational models can be personalised to help predict and prevent disease progression in individuals. 

The case-studies below offer a glimpse of the healthcare engineering research activity within prevention at UCL. If you would like your research project to be featured here, please email healthcare-eng@ucl.ac.uk.