Centre of Excellence in Medical Engineering
The Centre of Excellence based at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering was funded from 2009-2015. It was instrumental in enabling us to tackle some clinically relevant problems which it would not have been possible to investigate at the scale achieved or with such an inter-disciplinary approach through individual responsive mode grants with shorter-term and narrower objectives; for example: we have brought together obstetricians and paediatricians in a unique collaboration to help us deliver “womb-to-cot” personalised monitoring; we have been able to re-think the fundamentals of vital sign data acquisition, using webcams; and inter-connected strands of engineering research have been progressed based on using ultrasound both for imaging and for treatment, each of which has a high degree of difficulty and risk.
During the course of the programme the Centre of Excellence has seen progress in all aspects of the enterprise, from fundamental scientific advances to clinical validation of new technology and algorithms and commercial exploitation. Highlights include: clinical validation of fetal nutritional state measurement tools, completion of a 3-arm Randomised Controlled Trial of mobile phone technology to manage hypertension in South Africa, clinical validation of non-contact sensing using webcams, targeted drug delivery using a combination of ultrasound, cavitation, passive acoustic mapping and a novel liposomal formulation, validation of pH measurements from MRI and animal testing of new flow diverters for the treatment of cerebral aneurysms. Two spin-out companies have been formed: Oxsonics (drug delivery to solid-tumour patients), and Oxehealth (non-contact vital-sign monitoring) and a third company is close to spinning out.
The success of the Centre of Excellence has been instrumental in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering winning a 2015 Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education.
