Three prestigious IET awards for Department spin-out OrganOx

OrganOx Ltd, a spin-out co-founded by academics Professor Constantin Coussios in Engineering Science and Proffessor Peter Friend in Surgical Sciences, was recently awarded 3 out of 15 possible 2013 innovation awards by the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), alongside its prototype development partner Team Consulting Limited.

Professor Constantin Coussios Professor Coussios, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Department’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering, said: “On an incredible night, OrganOx won three categories: best healthcare technology, best intelligent system, best emerging technology design. This was an unprecedented achievement and completes an extraordinary year, during which 20 patients have for the first time been transplanted with livers which were kept functioning on a machine outside the body for up to 24 hours as part of a controlled clinical trial. I am delighted and grateful that the multidisciplinary engineering innovations underpinning the OrganOx metra have received such high praise from the IET engineering community”.

The OrganOx Metra machine involves the donated human liver being connected to the machine and irrigated with oxygenated red blood cells at normal body temperature, enabling the organ to function normally and produce bile outside the body for up to 24 hours. More information about the OrganOx Metra machine appears on page 3 of the Department of Engineering Science Newsletter.

OrganOx Metra IET Award 1 OrganOx Metra machine OrganOx Metra IET Award 2

The IET Innovation Awards celebrate the very best innovations in science, engineering and technology. Recognising the depth and breadth of innovative work being carried out across all areas of engineering and technology, at all stages of development, the IET Innovation Awards now span 15 categories. These include electronics, healthcare and sustainability; and are judged by a panel of more than 80 esteemed industry and academic experts.