Hi Aejaz,
Join the club! There's lots of useful projects, EU funded and otherwise that
seem to fade away after the research ends. There does seem to be a gap
between end of project and turning the results into a commercial or
available product.
Anyone interested in working with FAST to do a 'Where Are They Now?' report?
I often wonder if this lack of dissemination and exploitation is because the
research hypotheses sometimes aren't proven (i.e. the idea doesn't work).
But I can't see what is wrong with a project not producing the intended
results because the lessons learnt would be beneficial to everyone.
There's also the immense pressure that academic departments are under to get
grants, do the research and then get busy with their next proposal.
Otherwise they don't survive. Perhaps they aren't able to spend the time in
further development if there isn't an immediate gain? Academia does need to
be a lot better at publicising their research outside the usual journals.
Thanks to the BBC and other media, lots of people know about the Anti-tremor
mouse. How many members of the public got to know about TIDE or the robotic
orthoses you mentioned?
FAST have also become aware that researchers often find it hard to get the
funding for the final part of exploitation. For example, funding agencies
may not fund a project that has commercial potential and may suggest the
researcher to go and get a commercial partner. Trouble is, the idea may
still require some further work and many commercial companies would not be
interested because the project is not finalised. I've had contact with a few
researchers over the past year in this position and it's hard to tell them
where they should go next. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Cheers,
Aidan.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Zahid Aejaz (RFF) Clinical Engineer" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 12:49 PM
Subject: Re: Anti-tremor mouse stops PC shakes
> Hi Jeremy
>
> Its funny how these mega funded projects promise so much at the outset but
> when the 'work-package' deadlines are over many of the resulting so-called
> 'innovations' never seem to reach the AT market for some reason. For
> example, where are all those robotic orthoses (e.g CREST from Newcastle)
> developed so many years ago?
>
> Yours confusedly,
>
> Aejaz
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