Global Disability Innovation Hub

19/11/2025

"Caring and Resilient Cities: Advancing a Green 🌿, Feminist ✊, and Disability-Inclusive ♿ Urban Transition"

Local leaders, practitioners, and experts will come together, at COP30, to explore inclusive pathways toward sustainable, equitable, and resilient cities.

This session will highlight how care, accessibility, and participation are essential pillars for just and green urban transitions — integrating feminist and disability-inclusive perspectives into climate planning and urban governance 🤩

✨ Stay tuned for inspiring insights from:
- Carmynie Xavier, Institute for Climate and Society
- Maria Gracia Aguilar, Climate & Care Initiative
- Bala Nagendran M, Global Disability Innovation Hub
- Rosa María Juarez Cobeñas, Latin American Network of Organizations of Persons with Disabilities and Their Families (RIADIS)
- Marina Barros, Alziras Institute
- Cerin Kizhakkethottam, UN-Habitat

18/06/2025

GDI Hub Accelerate (our innovation arm) powers AT innovators across 3 continents to bring new solutions to market ✨. From digital solutions to mobility and prosthetics, speech therapy and AI based technologies, we create the mechanisms for new ideas to be refined to market ready products - supporting accessible and inclusive innovation ecosystems.

This week we have supported x3 ventures in showcasing at ISPO 2025 World Congress - which brings together the latest scientific and clinical advances, products, innovative technologies, designs, and materials in prosthetic and orthotic care.

➡️ Life & Limb AI

Accessible, affordable, and aspirational bionic limbs - with smart, user-centric solutions that blend advanced engineering with intuitive design to empower individuals with limb differences. At the heart of their work is the BIONICLI®, a customizable, multi-articulated myoelectric prosthetic hand designed to mirror natural human movement.

lifeandlimb.ai were part of our Attvaran Accelerator (through our ). Support included global regulatory guidance, facilitating partnerships, advising on market access, and supporting business strategy and distribution.

➡️ Ugani Prosthetics

Enables Prosthetics and Orthotics Workshops, clinics, NGOs, and governments to produce highest-quality, EU-standard 3D-printed prosthetics and orthotics, at a fraction of traditional costs. The all-in-one Digital package includes advanced hardware, intuitive software, and hands-on training, making it possible to deliver custom fit prosthetics and orthotics quickly and affordably.

We partnered with Ugani Prosthetics on a UNICEF-AT2030 funded project to train Nepali prosthetists on digital fabrication of prosthetic components, and deliver devices alongside local partners to trial 75 in Nepal to evidence the potential of these methods for scaling up.

➡️ Operations Namaste

By creating 3D component fabrication tools and virtual training materials, Operation Namaste has empowered prosthetic care-givers with the ability to manufacture low-cost prosthetic liners – improving quality of life for persons with limb differences living in Nepal and other countries where these components are cost-prohibitive.

In partnership with Operation Namaste and International Nepal Fellowship and funded by our UK International Development AT2030 programme, we piloted the use of silicone locking liner prosthesis for people with transtibial limb difference affected with leprosy at Green Pastures Hospital, Pokhara. We conducted training workshops, clinical protocol development and the first patient fittings, to improve comfort and residual limb health.

If you are visiting I.S.P.O this week - do pop by the exhibition to say hi 👋

01/05/2025

Earlier today in Yokohama, Japan GDI Hub senior researcher Dr Dilisha Patel took to the stage at the ACM CHI Conference (the leading global conference of Human-Computer Interaction) to present: A Critical Review of S*xuality, Technology and Disability.

This research, as part of the GDI Hub led AT2030 programme, funded by UK Government is a critical review of how Disability, S*x and Technology has been researched and provides a seminal critique of how we need to be more inclusive in our methodologies.

The paper presents a descriptive and analytical outline of existing research through which was identified unmarked norms governing research, including a focus on individualised technologies oriented on heteronormative assumptions on sexual desires.

The research explored common methods employed and describes the involvement, or lack thereof, of disabled people in research practice. Identifying gaps in collective knowledge the research the paper illustrates barriers to knowledge-making in this space.

➡️ Read in full: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713994 -6

Co-authors include: Ekat Osipova, Katta Spiel & Giulia Barbareschi

16/12/2024

We're delighted to share a new publication launched in The Lancet from our UK Aid funded hashtag : 'Demographic, socioeconomic, & social barriers to use of mobility assistive products: a multistate analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing'.

Authored by GDI Hub's Jamie Danemayer the study showed that women are more likely than men to experience mobility limitations that could benefit from the use of mobility aids - but are much less likely to use them when needed.

Though prevalence of disability continues to rise among the over fifties, many people do not have access to the mobility aids needed to maintain independence. Published in The Lancet Public Health, the study explored which demographics are more or less likely to use mobility aids, when they would benefit from them.

The team analysed survey responses from 12,080 participants aged 50-89 over 13 years (2006-2019), using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Of the 8,432 participants that reported having some mobility difficulty, 61% experienced unmet need at least once, while 39% reported using a mobility aid at least once.

Women were 50% more likely than men to transition from not needing a mobility aid to unmet need status during the study period, but were 20% less likely to transition from unmet need to use.

The research highlights a gender inequality that needs to be addressed to improve an overlooked area of public health.

Jamie Danemayer, first author of the study from UCL Computer Science and UCL’s Global Disability Innovation Hub, said: “Our analysis suggests that there is a clear gender gap in access to mobility aids. Though our data didn’t ascertain the reason why participants weren’t using mobility aids, other research tells us that women are often more likely than men to face obstacles such as cost barriers as a result of well-documented income disparities between genders."

“Many mobility aids are designed for men rather than women, which we think may be a factor. Using mobility aids can also make a disability visible, which can impact the safety and stigma experienced by women in particular. There’s a critical need for further research to identify and break down the barriers preventing women from accessing mobility aids that would improve their quality of life.”

Co-authors include: Mikaela Bloomberg ∙ Adam Mills ∙ Catherine Holloway ∙ Shereen Hussein. This study is from researchers at UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Read the publication in full ➡️

Women might be disproportionately likely to have unmet MAP needs, whereas other demographic, socioeconomic, and social factors are associated with high MAP need overall. Our findings directly support efforts towards expanding access to assistive products and identifying groups that could particularl...

08/11/2024

On the BBC News today: 'Easy-fit prosthetics offer hope to thousands of Gaza amputees', featuring innovative Assistive Technology from two ventures who have been supported by GDI Hub on their innovation journeys.

Koalaa soft prosthetics & Amparo have used new moulding techniques and easy-to-fit sockets to enable low cost and streamline fitting - providing new mechanisms to bring prosthetics to more people around the world.

The Koalaa soft prosthetic has been supported by our UK aid funded AT2030 programme to evolve and test in new markets, focusing for the first time on Africa and the potential to meet needs in low- & middle- income countries.

Amparo was supported by GDI Hub as this innovation was emerging - providing technical support, acceleration and testing of this new approach.

We're proud to see the impact of these ventures as their reach continues to grow, and their prosthetics change lives.

Children are among the thousands to have lost limbs in Gaza, forcing them to learn a new way of life.