Dementia, the name for a group of symptoms that include difficulties with memory, thinking, problem solving, language and perception, is a condition that can affect young and old.

The dream of harnessing the power of the stars to provide near-limitless clean electricity has remained up to now just that – a dream. In stars like our own Sun, a huge amount of energy and heat is released by nuclear fusion, when the nuclei of atoms collide at very high speeds to create a new, larger nucleus. Most attempts to replicate the process in laboratories, using expensive high-density lasers or magnetic fields and super-hot plasmas, have so far struggled to get to the point at which more energy is produced than put in.

Knowing the gestational age of the foetus is an important aspect of modern maternity care. In the western world, sonographers use high-precision ultrasound scans in the first trimester of pregnancy to estimate gestational age and subsequently help monitor foetal health. But in most lower-middle-income countries, women do not have this early scan and trained sonographers with high-resolution equipment are thin on the ground.

Coronary heart disease is the single most common cause of death before the age of 65 in the UK and affects nearly half the population over the age of 40. The accurate detection of heart problems is therefore of prime importance.

Noise can be a problem in busy intensive care units. OCC has helped to develop a pilot noise awareness system for clinical staff.

ESPRC Impact Acceleration funding awarded to Oxford University enabled their researchers to begin commercialisation of software for predicting adverse heart complications in early stage drug candidates. They turned to OCC to transform their early stage software into a package for today’s user expectations.

One of the most significant sources of Big Data is social media: a continuous feed of unstructured, unvalidated, near real-time information about what people are experiencing. As part of the European EmerGent project., OCC is developing a cloud-based emergency management service to gather and mine social media.

An EU project to provide personalised rehabilitation via telemedicine for the major motor impairments caused by Parkinson’s disease.

In response to certain visual cues, some Parkinson’s disease patients experience ‘kinesia paradoxa’ – a sudden disappearance of the major symptoms, greatly increased mobility and a subjective feeling of well-being.