Five years ago SofTMech ran our first patient event at the Golden Jubilee Conference hotel https://www.softmech.org/news/headline_719049_en.html

On the 26th November 2024 we ran our second event, this time in partnership with the National Research Scotland (NRS) Cardiovascular Research Network. Mary McAuley, Cardiovascular Research Network Champion Support Manager, was instrumental in helping to design and organise the day.

The themes included cardiovascular diseases, the eye and cancer.  The programme included a talk by a clinician and a patient. Patients also took part in a variety of experiments which demonstrated how stents work and how your heart gets excited.

The day started with a welcome talk by Professor Dirk Husmeier. Dirk is the Principal Investigator on the SofTMech SET grant, an  EPSRC-funded Research Hub on Statistical Emulation and Uncertainty Quantification in Cardiac Mechanics. Dirk set the scene for the day’s talks and interactive sessions.

This was followed by a talk by the lead of the National Research Scotland Cardiovascular Research Network, Professor Lis Neubeck, who outlined the challenges of cardiovascular research and the potential benefits for patients. Dirk’s talk on damaged heart tissue featured resistance bands and springs as he demonstrated the elastic qualities of the heart. Dr Hao Gao’s talk examined blood flow and the role of heart valves, focusing on the mitral valve. He presented videos of  both a healthy and damaged valve in action.  Then we had Professor Colin Berry, a clinician from the Golden Jubilee Hospital, who gave an overview of the international studies he and his team were involved with and highlighted the potential of mathematical models. His collaboration with SofTMech Researchers Xiaoyu Luo, Nick Hill, Hao and Namshad Thekkethill is the Heart-Blood Vessel model with MRI. The studies featured work from clinical fellows Rebecca Hannah and DylanTan from Colin’s team, who joined us for the day.   Next Andy Steele, a patient, gave a thought provoking talk featuring the use of AI; Andy also gave a demonstration in the afternoon. Dr David Dalton looked at the exciting use of AI in cardiac modelling, which has the potential to create an AI model that could be used in real time clinical decision making. As Mihaela Paun, one of the Post Doc Researchers, was unfortunately not able to present, Dirk gave her talk on “How can you measure blood pressure in the lungs”.

Then it was time for the patients to get more involved, with Dr Sean McGinty giving a talk about stents and then allowing the patients to view demonstrations using skittle sweets, which simulated the flow of drug-eluting stents. Post Docs/PhD students Silvia Renon, Orla Conlon and Lucia del Ferro led these demonstrations.

After a lunch break Dr Peter Stewart’s interactive talk focused on eye disease, with the audience being asked to answer via the mentimeter tool. Cancer was the theme of the next talk, with Dr Raimondo Penta and Dr Zita Fulop presenting how maths could play a part in tackling this condition. Their work featured electrochemotherapy, a cancer treatment combining electric pulses with chemotherapy to enhance drug uptake by tumour cells. The last formal talk was from Dr Radostin Simitev, who looked at excitation in the heart. The patients were then hands on playing with the excitation model featured in his talk. Radostin’s student Zhechao Yang helped with the demonstrations.

Throughout the day the patients had the opportunity to book a virtual tour of the heart led by Sarah Donaldson, Sathish Kumar and Namshad, or to join Andy looking at a virtual Patient Public Involvement panel.

The day finished with the speakers forming a panel chaired by Lis and Dirk.  It was very encouraging that many patients shared their particular journey.

We thank all the patients who attended on the day, who truly made the event “A Patient Day”

We captured the day in video and picture; view via links on the right.

 

 

First published: 4 March 2025

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