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Welcome

The Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Research Institute (HRSRI) is one of six Research Institutes within the Faculty of Life and Health Sciences.

 

The research team is multidisciplinary in composition with staff from a range of Allied Health Professions and health sciences. This group currently represents one of the largest Allied Health Professions research teams within the UK and Ireland.

 

The team includes staff researching in

• Occupational Therapy
• Physiotherapy
• Podiatry
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Clinical Physiology.

The activities of the Institute members are primarily concerned with critical evaluation and implementation of interventions to improve the wellbeing of chronically ill individuals. In particular the research is focused on the use of exercise interventions tailored to suit the needs of individual groups e.g. those living with chronic back pain, stroke, multiple sclerosis, respiratory disease etc. Other research is focused around evaluation of therapeutic practices and procedures employed by therapists in clinical practice.

In the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008 the HRSRI showed an advance on the excellent rating of 4 obtained in RAE 2001. There was an improvement in all of the main indicators and over half of the work has been assessed to be of “international quality in terms of originality, significance and rigour”. Fourteen staff were submitted to the RAE 2008, a significant increase on the 8 entered to RAE 2001. Improvements were also reported in the amount of research income, the number of successful postgraduate research students and our research infrastructure. Of particular note was the completion of the new state-of-the-art Centre for Rehabilitation Research which provides a purpose built facility for a range of diagnostic and interventional activities linked to rehabilitation research. The high standard of research output is also aided by a number of successful collaborations with local, national and international centres of excellence.

The success of the Institute to date is evidenced by its publication record in international journals, and external grant support from a variety of sources including government (Research and Development Office, HPSS Northern Ireland; Department of Employment and Learning), charities (e.g. Wellcome Trust; Multiple Sclerosis Society, Northern Ireland; National MS Society, US) and industry.
We look forward to our research continuing to make a difference to patient rehabilitation across a wide range of chronically disabling conditions.

Further information is available in the HRSRI Annual report (pdf format) and on the accompanying web pages. Information on our results from the RAE 2008 are available at http://research.ulster.ac.uk/rae/UoAs/12B.html