Seed funding for biomedical projects

Four clinically led biomedical engineering projects have received seed funding from the UNSW faculties of Medicine and Engineering.

UNSW is investing up to $1.8 million on projects that engage clinicians in solving problems such as sleep apnoea, keeping the elderly safe in their homes, improving medical image analysis and guiding radiotherapy treatments for cancer patients.

This is the first time UNSW has offered this type of partnership and funding for clinically led healthcare solutions that could be utilised by local area health districts.

The projects involve UNSW’s collaboration with Prince of Wales Hospital, Ingham Institute, Liverpool and Macarthur Cancer Therapy Centres and the CSIRO, with the aim for funding to lead to clinical trials and commercialisation of the four initiatives.

“Biomedical engineering is one of the most dynamic and fast-growing fields,” said Mark Hoffman, UNSW’s Dean of Engineering. “The Biomedical Engineering Seed Fund, created with Rodney Phillips, UNSW’s Dean of Medicine, is unique in that it’s clinically led, supporting initiatives that pair a clinician with an engineering researcher on real-world problems where projects could have an immediate impact on health issues.”

A new monitoring technology to help people with early dementia live safely at home for longer is one of the projects being developed by Professor Branko Celler, from the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications.

“More than 410,000 people in Australia have dementia, with about 70,000 living alone,” said Professor Celler. “What we want to create is a low-cost, adaptable at-home technology device that can prolong the period of time someone with dementia can continue living independently.”

Working with a clinical care team, a virtual assistant system will be set up in the patient’s home with miniature speakers in each room that talk and instruct the person on daily and weekly tasks.

Professor Celler is currently working with community nurses and Alzheimer’s clinicians to identify existing and new technology that can be used in a clinical trial setting. “At-home telemonitoring is crucial for reducing expenditure on medical services, hospital admissions and the burden on the health system,” he said.

In another project, Professor Lynne Bilston, from UNSW Medicine and Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), in collaboration with researchers from the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, is developing a device for obstructive sleep apnoea. “New treatments for sleep apnoea are urgently needed,” said Professor Bilston.

“Many patients cannot tolerate the current clunky and uncomfortable ‘gold standard’ treatment, Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP). Other treatments are not effective for all patients.”

Professor Bilston said that by developing and testing a new device to stimulate the muscles around the throat, “we can prevent the collapse of the upper airway that occurs during sleep in sleep apnoea patients”.

Other projects include Professor Alec Welsh’s work to improve 3D ultrasound medical image analysis tools in order to quantify available data using new applications and Associate Professor Lois Holloway’s development of radiotherapy software tools for patients suffering from prostate, lung and breast cancer. Professor Holloway plans to develop a methodology to show how radiotherapy treatments should change based on outcomes of data and adapting as new data becomes available.

The projects will be funded for three years.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Maksym Yemelyanov