East of England research partnership celebrates successful completion of first study
- 19 March 2024
- 2 min read
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust's (CPFT) Windsor Research Unit has been praised for successfully delivering one of the first studies in the UK to test new wearable devices to assess brain health and memory, in a new research partnership.
In June 2022, the Windsor Research Unit at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) partnered with the University of Cambridge Department of Clinical Neurosciences to run the Cumulus Neuroscience CNS-101 study, which aimed to assess new technology to monitor early stage dementia.
On completion of this study in March 2024, CPFT has been praised as an exemplar site by the study lead and sponsor Cumulus Neuroscience, for the hard work of the dedicated Windsor Research Unit team. Clinical research nurses Lynda Barnes and Ronny George (left and centre, pictured below with Professor James Rowe, right) supported the trial over 18 months, screening 140 people to recruit 20 participants – 10 with early Alzheimer’s disease to compare with 10 healthy control volunteers. They ran over 50 study visits with assessments, providing training to use the Cumulus Neuroassessment Platform at home and on-call technical support.
Lynda and Ronny agreed: “Our participants have all been wonderful to work with on this study! They are amazing people and with their help we completed the study on time and target at one of the largest NHS sites in the UK.”
Learn more about participants’ experiences of this study in an interview film on CPFT Research YouTube: https://youtu.be/PNX3mZo_GRM
James Rowe, Professor of Cognitive Neurology at the University of Cambridge and Chief Investigator for Cumulus (CNS-101) said: “The CPFT team at the Windsor Research Unit have been brilliant from start to finish in delivering this study. With their professional, patient-centred approach they were effective and successful in ensuring all stakeholder expectations were met and that participants were well cared for. The Cumulus Neuroscience team have also been great to work with throughout the study. I look forward to continuing this new research partnership with CPFT to offer the latest opportunities for NHS patients to help develop dementia care and treatment.“
Shannon Diggin, Clinical Trial Lead at Cumulus Neuroscience said: “We are grateful to the Cambridge team for their commitment and input over the last 18 months that we’ve worked together. Our CNS-101 sites have played a vital role in delivering high quality data collection, and already we can see the evidence of this in the interim data which was presented recently at global Alzheimer’s disease conferences. With more data readouts expected this year, it’s a very exciting time for us and Cumulus Neuroscience would like to thank our sites and our participants for helping us accelerate towards better measurement and deeper understanding of conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.”
If you would like to participate in dementia research and other studies at CPFT, please contact the Trust’s Windsor Research Unit on wru@cpft.nhs.uk or call 01223 219753. Visit www.cpft.nhs.uk/be-part-of-research to find out more.
The CUMULUS study was sponsored by Cumulus Neuroscience, funded by Innovate UK (grant number 93826) with P1vital Ltd., and supported by the University of Cambridge, CPFT and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
