Edinburgh Napier University

Awarded 01 July 2024

SENSE HEALTH, a new project funded by NHSScotland Assure with the aim of improving indoor air quality in hospitals.

SENSor-based Environmental Response System for HEALTHcare (SENSE-HEALTH) is a project funded by NHSScotland Assure, aimed at indoor air quality (IAQ) in hospitals. The project is a collaborative effort between the Institute of Occupational Medicine, University of Strathclyde and the NHS which has been funded by NHSScotland Assure. The partners will work together to use real-time air quality indicators, including carbon dioxide, to develop and evaluate an action plan to ensure the comfort and health of hospital staff and users. Spanning two years, SENSE-HEALTH is an innovative project, combining technology and stakeholder-engaged approaches to address healthcare challenges.

For more information, contact Emily Christopher at Emily.Christopher@iom-world.org.

Awarded 01 September 2024

The Aerosol Infection Research Laboratory (AIRLAB) is an international group of clinicians and scientists striving to further understand the science governing respiratory pathogen transmission and develop innovative evidence-based infection prevention and control methods. 

AIRLAB has been awarded a grant from NHSScotland Assure to quantify the exhaled aerosolised respiratory virus in acutely hospitalised patients. This exciting multi-disciplinary project will see the design, development and validation of a novel exhaled pathogen sampler within the University of Edinburgh departments of Engineering and Virology, before clinical deployment within NHS hospitals. The two-year project will answer crucial questions regarding what really drives respiratory pathogen transmission, laying the groundwork for developing improved infection prevention strategies. 

For more information, contact Dr Nick Wilson at Nicholas.Wilson@nhs.scot

Candida auris is an emerging fungal pathogen, recently elevated to the critical priority group of fungal pathogens by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Of key concern is its ability to cause outbreaks within intensive and chronic care units, which is facilitated through its capacity to persist as biofilms (communities of microbes stuck together on surfaces), tolerate cleaning and disinfection, and be readily transmittable. Our understanding of how this pathogen survives and persists is limited, hampering our capacity to effectively control this critical priority pathogen in the hospital setting.
 
This NHSScotland Assure-funded study intends to address this knowledge gap by undertaking an epidemiological study of C. auris within Scotland, and in parallel systematically investigate how C. auris survives and tolerates biocides within both controlled laboratory and clinical environments. We hope to understand how much, if any, of this emerging yeast is in Scotland and determine how we can control and prevent its spread. This project brings together expertise from the Safeguarding Infection through Infection Prevention (SHIP) group at Glasgow Caledonian and is supported by experts in clinical microbiology and infection control from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and the University of the West of Scotland.