Advanced Research Training for the Biotribology of Natural and Artificial Joints in the 21st Century

The programme of research training will deliver early stage researchers (ESRs) with the necessary technical and innovation training/experience to provide the much needed advances in the performance of both natural and artificial joints with a focus on biotribology, that is, friction, lubrication and wear in these interventions.

These researchers will gain the necessary interdisciplinary skills, intersectoral knowledge and the wider innovation abilities demanded by industry with which to deliver timely and cost-effective solutions to some of Europe’s most intractable healthcare problems in arthritis.

These aims will be achieved by a unique combination of hands on research in leading research centres, industry secondments and wide-ranging workshops covering technical and transferable skills.

Importantly the ESRs will form a network of highly trained innovators and research leaders that are well placed to be employed in Europe's foremost companies and SMEs.

The career options for these ESRs are wide ranging including regulatory affairs, commercial R&D, management and policy advisors, as well as academia, all of which comprise a leadership and innovation component.

Issues of biotribology are truly a global phenomenon with the deleterious wear related failure of artificial joints running at record levels and predicted to get higher.

The highly significant economic and patient issues around early failure in metal-on-metal total hip and resurfacing replacements have been brought sharply into focus, recently.

The media have defined this as a significant public health issue and substantial issues persist with very recent reports of inadequate devices.

This is a truly European problem with, for instance, new devices manufactured in the UK being first implanted, unsuccessfully, in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.

Technically BioTrib will deliver new test methodologies, as well as new bearings, for the meaningful assessment of these innovations.