Digital Health and Wellbeing

Our work involves the application and implementation of digital and mobile technologies with the novel use of artificial intelligence and informatics. Our research aims to guide innovation and the transformation of health and wellbeing to overcome unmet needs. We work with key stakeholders to develop new sensing techniques for monitoring a person's health more continuously, conveniently, and sustainably with a goal of taking sensing beyond the lab and clinic.

A particular emphasis is on algorithm development and digital biomarkers using wearable technologies and mobile computing to understand mechanistic (e.g., cognitive) as well as lifestyle factors in ageing (Godfrey, Alshabrawy, Rooksby, Pointon). Recognising the societal importance of this human centric approach, staff (Akhtar, Anwar, Sice, Elvin) research digital health challenges pertaining to vulnerable groups and information retrieval for decision support systems. We also research digital medicine-based topics in e.g., cancer-focused bioinformatics & functional genomics (Kurt, Woo)

Across the group we have a collaborative culture, regularly working with clinical and healthcare practitioners. Our computing science expertise is complimented by a broad spectrum of additional interests including but not limited to: wearable technology, digital biomarkers, bioinformatics, information behaviour, data mining, mental health, signalling theory and computational biology.

Some of our partners include Parkinson’s UK, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust and Tyne, Esk and Wear Valley NHS Mental Health Trust.

This group is a part of the University’s multi-disciplinary research into the theme of Integrated Health and Social Care as well as Human and Digital Design.

Research from this group will be submitted to REF 2028 under UoA 11: Computer Science and Informatics.

To view research papers emanating from this group, please navigate to our Northumbria University research portal.

Group leadership and contacts

Group leader:

Dr Alan Godfrey

Interests: Bioinformatics, connected health, healthcare technology, sports technology, wearable systems

Deputy:

Dr Matthew Pointon

Interests: HCI, interaction design, mobile computing information behaviour, information retrieval

This research group forms part of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences.

Academic team

	Dr Akhtar Ali Interests: Data science, big data, health informatics, primary healthcare optimization and transformation, machine learning
	Souza Franca Lucas
	Dr Naveed Anwar Interests: Big data, data mining health informatics, digital entrepreneurship
	Mr Garry Elvin Interests: Web design, web development, wellbeing informatics
	Dr Zeyneb Kurt Interests: Bioinformatics, computational Biology, statistics, machine learning
	Dr John Rooksby Interests: HCI, digital Health, development and evaluation of novel technologies for personal and public health
	Dr Petia Sice Interests: Wellbeing informatics, systems and complexity sciences, interpersonal neurobiology and the arts
Affiliated members:
	Prof Wai Lok Woo Interests: Data mining, information analytics, knowledge discovery, intelligence integration
	Prof Martyn Amos Interests: Synthetic biology, nature-inspired computing, collective behaviour crowd simulation

Doctoral students

Yunus Celik

Fraser Young

Olalekan Ogundipe

Rachel Mason (with faculty of Health and Life Sciences)

Lisa Graham (with faculty of Health and Life Sciences)

Exemplar projects and partnerships

	Using AI for running gait analysis
	About music service to provide self-care support during COVID (Music for wellbeing site)
	Creating a mobile application co-designed by football fans to promote physical activity and active travel specifically among middle-aged men
	The Observatory for Monitoring Data-Driven Approaches to COVID-19
	Developing real world system capability in trauma informed care (About, AHSN NENC). Summit report (see page 10)