Kate Turley is a former Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) Associate turned PhD researcher at Ulster University. Kate's KTP project, the development of a daylight-simulating luminaire for people living with dementia, is a Finalist in the 'Best KTP' category at the annual KTP Awards held on 27 November. Kate is also a Finalist in the 'Future Leader' category for her outstanding work on the project.
Working in partnership with Chroma Lighting and an inter-disciplinary team of researchers from Ulster University, the project was able to make a substantial impact for the lives of people living with dementia in a local care home.
Chroma Lighting and Ulster University KTP
Kate’s knowledge transfer partnership was focused on developing a daylight-simulating luminaire for people living with dementia to support their body clocks, and subsequently improve their mood, sleep/wake and rest-activity patterns.
“My role was to design algorithms which monitored the behavioural response to lighting exposure to better understand the relationship between light and wellbeing at the individual level.
Working in partnership with Chroma Lighting and researchers from Ulster University’s School of Computing and the School of Nursing and Paramedic Science, our goal was to improve their lighting design in future and inform lighting policy for this cohort.”
Together, the KTP team were able to develop a novel, patented Internet of Things (IoT) architecture between luminaires and sensors which facilitates the collection and analysis of individual data on the light/wellbeing relationship. This leverages a feedback loop back out to the luminaires where we can automate data-driven changes to the lighting based on sensor metrics.
The team received ethical approval to validate this fitting in a local care home with really promising results!
The Research behind the KTP
Cells within our eyes called the ipRGCs or the Intrinsically Photosensitive Retinal Ganglion Cells connect to a part of the brain that's responsible for and maintaining our circadian rhythm. The peak response for these cells is at a shorter wavelength, for example blue wavelength light.
These cells are primed to react to changes in light intensity and colour temperature throughout the day. For example, at midday we are exposed to bright blue skies, however as the day progresses into evening, warmer, softer colours like reds, oranges and pinks appear. Throughout the day our bodies have evolved to expect different wavelengths of spectra that are beneficial to our circadian rhythm.
“The time we spend indoors under static light fittings that do not change in colour or intensity throughout the day can disrupt that peak response to our circadian rhythm. By installing daylight simulating lighting in the care home we worked with, we are catering to those ipRGCs; effectively bringing the outside in. This then impacts our sleep wake cycles and rest activity in a better way than static lighting.”
The lighting solution also includes sensors that are monitoring the individual’s response to the dynamic spectra. It is widely known that daylight simulator lighting is more beneficial for well-being, however, what is not known, is how this differs on a person-by-person basis.
“Your age, your gender, and in this case, your dementia pathology will have a massive impact on how your circadian rhythm responds to light. Our sensors are essentially monitoring how these change over time. If we compare static lighting control to our daylight simulating lighting intervention, we can see that there's improvements to the amount of time that individuals are spending in bed at night, improvements to the rest activity cycles, and we're also seeing improvements to patient mood.”
KTP Impact
Everyone’s well-being could benefit from improvements to our circadian rhythm. This project focused solely on people with dementia.
“People living with dementia have more heavily disrupted circadian rhythms than you or I would because they experience symptoms like sundowning; an increase in agitation in the evening as the sun sets. This shifts into their sleep wake cycle and makes their sleep more disruptive.
Sleep is a restorative process for our bodies. In people with dementia is helps to mop up the build-up of abnormal plaques in the brain that causes their disease; slowing down the rate of cognitive decline.”
Daylight simulating lighting, like the solution provided to the care home by the project, improves the alignment of rest activity cycles with light and dark, improving sleep, and slowing down the rate of progression of cognitive decline as well.
The KTP has made possible the growth of a database which provides information on the relationship between light and wellbeing for people living with dementia that we were once so ‘in the dark about’.
The Society of Light and Lighting’s 2024 Position Statement draws attention to the fact that lighting design for people living with dementia has not been explored anywhere near enough and we need to start putting our research efforts into understanding their needs.
“By scaling this innovative KTP output across the globe, we can gather those metrics and share the knowledge with interdisciplinary teams so that we can all make informed decisions about lighting for their wellbeing.”
What the Future Holds
For Kate, the project continues.
“I am really happy to say that all my KTP supervisors are now continuing to support me as supervisors in my PhD studies sponsored by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 so they are stuck with me for another while yet!
Kate's PhD will focus on an upcoming study that includes the perspective of people living with dementia in relation to their lighting and how they interact with light in their everyday lives.
“Hopefully this can help us paint the full picture of light and its impact on their lives so that we can help support them from a more informed place in future.”
KTP at Ulster University
For 45 years, Ulster University has established an excellent track record in helping Northern Ireland businesses grow and flourish through exciting KTP collaborations that have delivered strategic, transformational step changes in productivity, market share and operating process.