Health

The Health Challenge has two main themes – Healthy Living and Healthcare with sub-themes on Exercise, Wellbeing, Ageing, Monitoring & Diagnostics and Therapeutics. Bringing together diverse academic and industry expertise from the network’s SIGs, the challenge is committed to applying metamaterials to solve major health issues. The challenge has both a prevention and a treatment perspective, and it is aligned to UN Sustainability Development Goal 3: Good health and well-being.

A key component of the challenge is realising the untapped potential of metamaterials in health applications. Such application areas could include:

• Sporting goods
• Protective clothing
• Exercise and sleep monitoring devices
• Prosthetics & orthotics
• Implants
• Trauma & first aid equipment
• Biomedical imaging systems
• Point-of-care diagnostic sensors
• Implantable devices
• Target drug delivery & treatments

Application in these fields often requires investment to allow upscaling of emerging metamaterials technologies. The relatively rapid uptake within the healthy living sector, including goods for sport and physical activity, will be used as a test arena and proving ground for metamaterials, raising awareness of their potential and reducing barriers to entry into the more highly regulated healthcare sector.