Founded in 1999, FAST works to promote innovation and good practice in assistive technology, that is aids and equipment designed to help older and/or disabled people live independently. Ms Down has been the charity's Director since 2004.

‘I am delighted to receive this award which is a recognition of just how important assistive technology is in all our lives. We hear a lot these days about our ageing population and the need to make our society more inclusive for older and disabled people and assistive technology has a vital role to play in meeting these challenges,' Ms Down explained.

Assistive technology can be anything from a simple gadget like a jar-opener, to robotic rehabilitation aids, wheelchairs, prosthetics and health monitoring systems.

‘Developing innovative technology to support older and disabled people is critical if we are to respond to growing health and social care needs. But we also need to make sure that the people who specify, install and maintain assistive technology have the right competencies, and FAST has led the campaign for workforce standards in this area,' Ms Down stated.

FAST maintains a public database of research activity in assistive technology, a fully searchable resource which lists more than 1000 projects and is used by academics, policymakers and healthcare professionals. This information forms the basis of an annual Parliamentary report on current research and development work which FAST prepares on behalf of the Department of Health. FAST also produces newsletters and reports and provides consultancy services.

This year's Parliamentary report lists over 160 projects being carried out by UK universities, charities and commercial organisations.

‘Some projects use everyday technology such as mobile phones, for example to record and analyse food intake for people on special diets, or to provide prompts and advice for people with memory problems. We are also seeing a growing number of assistive technology initiatives which use more complex computer systems to monitor someone's health and well-being. These are particularly important for supporting people living with long term chronic health conditions, or people who have early stage dementia, who want to carry on living independently,' Ms Down said.

Such systems use miniaturised sensors which can be worn on the body to transmit information about someone's heart rate or breathing pattern to a central computer system. This can be combined with information from sensors around the house which can detect someone's movements in order to build up a picture of their activity levels and sound an alarm if, for example, the person has a fall.