As part of the seminar series organised by D4D’s MedTech Lead, Dr Avril McCarthy, we were delighted yesterday to hear from Kate Allatt, inspirational locked-in syndrome survivor and advocate, who shared and discussed her insights with D4D and other attendees from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals.

7 years ago today Kate suffered a brainstem stroke that left her in intensive care with locked-in syndrome, with no way to communicate her thoughts, fear, anxiety, pain and needs.

There are many ways in which the impact of her situation could have been improved, and Kate used this seminar as an opportunity to raise the unmet needs she had identified through her experiences. Over the coming months we hope to follow up some opportunities for Kate’s perspective and expertise to feed into future D4D projects to address some of these issues.

Kate has continued her advocacy for stroke survivors through the national media in recent weeks. You can hear a taster of Kate’s experiences from her contribution to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, here (at 2h20m) until 2 March 2017, and on Radio 2 being interviewed by Jeremy Vine, here (at 42m) until 3 March 2017.