TRIL technology is developed by a multi-disciplinary team of ethnographers, clinicians, designers and a range of technologists. To ensure that all the technology that TRIL designs and builds will really have the desired impact and benefit for the older person, TRIL technology research is both clinically and ethnographically informed. Ethnography is the science of understanding how people live and what makes them live the way they do. TRIL ethnographers spend extended periods of time with older people, getting to know them and understanding their day-to-day lives. This helps to identify opportunities to put technologies in place which are both unobtrusive and effective in supporting health. Clinicians develop models which link particular behavioural markers to health indicators to ensure the clinical efficacy of the research prototypes.
Technologists build prototypes to monitor these markers and analyse the data collected. Designers and ethnographers ensure that the technologies developed will become an accepted part of the day-to-day lives of older people.
A core asset of the TRIL Centre is the BioMOBIUS™ technology platform, a common technology platform of hardware and software components which are combined in different ways to support many different clinical models and research projects. The technology platform saves time and effort for clinicians, who can concentrate on their research, rather than on the machinery to support it. TRIL shares this common technology platform with the global research community.
TRIL takes the research out of the lab into the homes of older people. The home deployment programme has already installed research prototypes in the homes of approximately 200 older people. This drives improvements in the technology, as well as serving the ends of clinical research. Only by proving our technology in the home can we be confident of its impact on the lives of older people.