WHAT’S HAPPENING
Sepsis
sensor
developer
awarded
George Win eld, Founder and
CEO of SPYRAS, has won the
Royal Academy of Engineering’s
JC Gammon award, receiving a
£15,000 prize with support from
the Royal Academy of Engineering
Enterprise Hub.
Win eld’s company is
developing a low-cost, paper-based
sensor to help identify sepsis in
hospital patients by accurately
monitoring their breathing rate.
Patient deterioration due to
infections that develop into sepsis
is the primary cause of intensive
care unit admissions from lowerdependency
hospital wards,
according to the Academy.
A patient’s respiratory rate is
well known to be the earliest sign
of sepsis. The prototype paper
sensors being developed by SPYRAS
will provide continuous monitoring
of respiratory rate, inhalation and
exhalation periods and depth of
breathing. Machine learning will
help predict when a patient is
beginning to deteriorate and alert
clinicians early. Earlier identi cation
of the condition could save up to
14,000 lives a year in the UK alone.
The awards mark the Royal
Academy of Engineering Enterprise
Hub’s sixth annual Launchpad
competition, an initiative set up to
encourage more young people to
start their own businesses.
World’s rst wireless foetal
monitor wins award
A team of engineers and experts from the
University of Nottingham, Monica Healthcare
and GE Healthcare have received the 2019
Colin Campbell Mitchell Award from the Royal
Academy of Engineering.
They received the award
for developing the Monica
Novii Wireless Patch
System, a wearable
monitor for women in
labour that monitors the
baby’s heartbeat.
Foetal heart rate and
contraction monitoring
during pregnancy and
labour has been routine clinical practice
for the past 40 years, to evaluate the well-being
of the unborn baby and mother. However, the
traditional device involves two belts wrapped
around the mother’s abdomen holding
transducers connected to a bedside monitor.
This device is said to offer a number
of improvements. It overcomes heart rate
confusion between mother and unborn child. It
is unaffected by high body mass index, unlike its
ultrasound competitor. Its sensitivity improves
data accuracy, and its wireless connectivity
enables mothers to move around freely.
Those awarded were Professor Barrie Hayes-
Gill and Professor John Crowe from the University
of Nottingham, Terence Martin from Monica
Healthcare, and Kanwaljit Bhogal, Jean-Francois
Pieri and Carl Barratt from GE Healthcare.
Starting their research in the early 1990s,
Hayes-Gill and Crowe set themselves the
challenge of separating the electrical signals
produced by the unborn child’s heart from
contaminating noise signals, including
electrical signals
from the mother’s
heart, uterine activity
such as contractions,
and electronic
interference from other
medical devices used
during labour.
During trials at
Queen’s Medical
Centre, Nottingham,
a breakthrough came in the adoption of
a three-channel sensor, along with the careful
design of electronics to reach the theoretical
noise oor. If the foetus moves out of the range
of one channel, it falls into range of another; this
indicates movement – invaluable for monitoring
foetal well-being – and was an innovation that
secured another patent.
Hayes-Gill at University of Nottingham says:
“To see our research of many years become a
true commercial reality with devices now being
sold around the world is a very proud moment
for us all.”
The award is made annually to an engineer
or small team of engineers who have made an
outstanding contribution to the advancement of
any eld of UK engineering.
Power at the
bottom of the sea
ABB has proved a subsea electricity power cable
system that the company says will power extraction
plant at the seabed, as well as bring ‘the majority’
of the world’s offshore oil and gas platforms within
range of a land-based power plant. It says that a
single cable can carry up to 100MW over 600km
to depths of 3,000m.
“Moving the entire oil and gas production
facility to the seabed is no longer a dream.
Remotely operated, increasingly autonomous,
subsea facilities powered by lower carbon
energy are more likely to become a reality as we
transition towards a new energy future,” said Peter
Terwiesch, ABB industrial automation president.
ABB contends that powering pumps and
compressors on the seabed, closer to the reservoir,
can signi cantly reduce power consumption, and
that power from shore generates fewer carbon
emissions. Previously, only the transmission cable
and subsea step-down transformer were proven to
operate underwater. Now, it also includes medium
voltage variable speed drives and switchgear,
control and low voltage power distribution, and
power electronics and control systems.
A 3,000-hour shallow water test in a Finland
harbour (pictured) was completed in late 2019.
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