A Centre of Excellence

The University of Strathclyde is a leading international technological university. Students travel from as far as Europe, the Middle East and the Far East to train in prosthetics and orthotics science.

Here, Exceed talks to Roy Bowers, Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Strathclyde.

Q When was the centre established?

The National Centre for Prosthetics and Orthotics (NCPO) was established in 1972 following the Denny Report on “The future of the artificial limb service in Scotland” (Scottish Home and Health Department, 1970).

An active P&O research group in the Bioengineering Unit at the University of Strathclyde formed the nucleus of the new department, together with prosthetists who had attended courses on the then new quadrilateral and patellar-tendon bearing prosthetic socket designs, run in Scotland by Prof Charles (Chuck) Radcliffe of the Prosthetics Research Group of the Biomechanics Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.

The programme at Strathclyde enrolled its first students in 1973, initially awarding a Higher National Diploma (HND). This was later replaced with the first BSc (Hons) programme in Prosthetics and Orthotics in the UK, with the first cohort of degree students graduating in 1988.

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