The Exceed Research Network (ERN) is ten years old in 2025. We’re taking this opportunity to tell the ERN story, starting with how the Network started and developed. We’ll follow this by looking at ERN’s achievements and impacts.
The ERN Story
The Exceed Research Network (ERN) was founded in 2015 with a clear purpose. At that time the need for research and data for the disability sector, especially in lower resource settings, was widely recognised and ERN was established to address this gap.
ERN emerged when Exceed Worldwide, which is a leader in the provision of prosthetics and orthotics (P&O) education and services in lower resource countries, reached out to the university and business sectors. The goal was to create a research consortium which would combine the academic discipline of professional researchers with the experience of disability practitioners to drive high quality applied research and support the work of Exceed Worldwide and other P&O service providers.
ERN member Mike Berthaume
The Exceed Research Network first convened in February 2015. What began as a small gathering has become a multi-national network with members representing organisations that work in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America, South Asia and Southeast Asia. ERN is now a unique, multi-sector, voluntary network of experts involving 32 organisations, including universities, NGOs, P&O businesses and public sector bodies. Its 45 individual members include eminent researchers and disability practitioners with a wide range of capabilities.
These include disability policy; health systems; P&O education and services; bio-engineering; P&O device development and use; ethical research and service provision; outcomes and effectiveness measures; disability measurement and statistics; ethical data access and analysis; health economics; mental health; poverty and social inequality; physiotherapy; quantitative and qualitative research; PO business; market research and the development of new, sustainable P&O service models.
This rich mix of expertise enables ERN to form cross-sector consortia to carry out funded and unfunded research, centred on P&O and wider disability issues in lower resource settings. Through high-quality, high-impact activities, ERN shapes the research agenda by setting research and ethical standards, building capacity, improving the lives of people with disability and disseminating knowledge on disability research and its impact in lower-resource countries.