3 presentations during the afternoon
- Healthcare: What new technologies will revolutionise medicine to improve lives – Dr Helen Meese. Excellent speaker and presentation about things to consider regarding new technologies and the influences they are having – good and bad – on helping us to live longer, healthier lives. Unfortunately, due to a disconnect between the arts festival timetable and our timetable, there was only about 15 people in attendance.
- Virtual reality in healthcare – Dr Thomas Day explained the work of his team at Chester University and how VR (originally from the gaming industry) was helping to train clinicians and the rehabilitation of stroke patients. There were more people in attendance at this presentation
- Materials to shape our vision: how advanced materials are fighting the loss of sight. Prof Rachel Williams who is an engineering working in the medical sector gave an extremely informative presentation on how materials (and the engineers who development) are helping to fight sight loss and the implications of this.
The presentations were followed in the early evening by a question time style debate, hosted by Dr Helen Meese, with questions posed from the floor. There was a couple of school children in attendance but unfortunately no IMechE members other than committee members and one person from the Region who had attended all day. Again there were only about 20 people who came for the evening event.
The questions posed and answers given by the panel, the 3 presenters from the day were joined by Andy Cairns from NWC Innovation Agency for the NHS and Maggi Tebrake from 3M Medical Materials and Technology, were extremely interesting and thought provoking. The discussion ranged from everything from people being able to make their own decision to die to how new innovations get into the healthcare system. It was a shame that more people were not present to take part in this excellent event.