MedePad

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In 2014, a subsidiary of MedePad, BioSensors, was awarded a six figures award of just under £100k from The Small Business Research Initiative for Healthcare (SBRI) to investigate how technology and sensors can make it easier and less invasive to monitor a child’s health after major surgery. Their research focuses on how sensors can be used to make blood sampling and the monitoring of children’s health in hospital less invasive. When children have heart surgery they regularly need blood sampling to monitor their health. Current tests track various bio-chemical levels in a patient’s blood through the traditional method of taking blood regularly for lab analysis, and are both invasive and also distressing for both children and their parents whilst increasing the risk of infection.

Working with a sensor system developed by LJMU and supported by Alder hey Children’s Hospital Trust, BioSensors are trialling the use of miniature, wireless and disposable transdermal sensors that will measure the levels of different elements in the blood including lactate and Haemoglobin levels. The sensors will transmit messages to a mobile solution designed by Med ePad ” Med eTrax” as an early warning system for a change in condition. The system will give doctors and nurses a consistent view of child’s health and progress. It also means there can be a real-time diagnosis and decision making, with no need to wait for results.

John Hopkins from MedePad explains how the eHealth cluster has supported their development.

“I’ve found the cluster very useful for meetings and speaking to likeminded people. It helps us to get a good feel for what’s going on in the community in Liverpool and it’s useful to touch base with what other people are doing, we have to be able to do that as we develop are now technologies and software.

Partnerships and collaboration have been key to us on several of our different projects and it has been vital to enable us to understand the need among the health community and for us to provide a solution”.