Inventive ideas win awards

The imaginative designs of three Loughborough University Industrial Design and Technology students have claimed top awards at this year’s RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) Design Direction Awards.

Richard Andrews received the National Patient Safety Agency Award of £1,500 in the ‘Design for Patient Safety’ category, for his self-service food catering system for hospitals, developed to give nurses more time to care for those who most need it.

Lauren Brooking’s design, ‘Sleepz’ – a system designed to maintain personal wellbeing through improved knowledge and understanding of sleep patterns – won her the GlaxoSmithKline Cash Award of £1,875 in the ‘Designing Wellbeing’ category.

Richard Linford was presented with the BT Award worth £1,000 in the ‘Inclusive Worlds’ Category, for his alert system for hearing impaired swimmers, which notifies athletes of race starts and alerts them to their coach’s instructions during training.

Another student, Nikita Golovlev, was awarded ‘highly commended’ in the ‘Inclusive Worlds’ section, and a further six Loughborough University students were shortlisted in their chosen categories.