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King’s, alongside King’s Health Partners, is creating a Medical Technology (MedTech) Hub embedded within the St Thomas’ Hospital campus in a bid to significantly reduce the time it takes to get new technologies from bench to bedside. Further, all new developments will employ the ideas of value-based healthcare and frugal innovation – thereby optimising patient care and reducing costs. This will ensure healthcare technologies become available to many more patients across the globe.
Our goal is to improve the diagnosis and treatment of all patients and ensure they receive the very best care.
Professor Reza Razavi, Vice President and Vice Principal (Research) at King’s
The MedTech Hub will initially focus on clinical challenges aligned to the research strengths and areas of patient focus across our wider partnership (King’s Health Partners). The Hub will bring clinicians, researchers, patients, academics and medical engineering companies (including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups) together at a single site. It will cost just over £106m, but more than £46m has already been raised through successful funding bids submitted to UK Research and Innovation, Wellcome and the Wolfson Foundation.
Healthcare engineering research at King’s has received significant endorsements. In November 2019, King’s School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, which is leading the MedTech Hub endeavour on behalf of King’s, received the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education. Professor Reza Razavi, Vice President and Vice Principal (Research) at King’s, said: ‘Our goal is to improve the diagnosis and treatment of all patients and ensure they receive the very best care. Our critical contribution is to continuously develop state-of-the-art medical technology, based on strong, patient-focused research.’
St Thomas’ Hospital
Building on existing translational research expertise, notably in diagnostic imaging sciences, a core experimental facility for SIE research and mock operating room will be available onsite. This state-of-the-art, fully equipped multi-user laboratory space will include everything from workshops and high-performance computing to robotics, micro-robotics, nano-engineering and mechatronics laboratories.
To address the lack of specialised and regulated manufacturing facilities for prototype development to enable crucial first-in-patient studies, Wellcome has funded the development of a manufacturing facility that is fully staffed, equipped and certified to build medical devices (like heart valves and brain implants for epilepsy) for use in clinical studies. The new facility will aid the translation of research to patients.
LIHE will provide co-working space for over 360 world-class research and development staff from academia, industry and the NHS.
This ground-breaking initiative will seek ways of reducing the cost of developing and producing new technologies, helping to make them more widely available to healthcare institutions and therefore allowing more patients to benefit from them.
‘It’s about removing the zeros at the end of the price,’ said Professor Sebastien Ourselin. Head of the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences and the academic leading the MedTech Hub project, ‘We may be able to save money by removing functions that are not required and using cheaper materials without any ill effect on quality. The cost of healthcare in the UK is continually growing; researchers therefore need to develop a more financially aware mindset. Further, it’s also about thinking about where we spend money. For example, in the UK, we spend billions of pounds on drug development and less on researching new surgical methods. Most people will need some kind of surgery in their lifetime in the long run. If we do this, we will see better outcomes for more patients.’
A very recent innovation that has already been used in over 150 procedures is the epilepsy navigation system, or ‘EpiNav’.
About 30 per cent of people with epilepsy do not respond to drugs, and in these cases the alternative is to surgically remove the part of the brain that may be causing seizures. For these procedures to be successful, surgeons need to know the precise part of the brain responsible for the seizures.
One approach is to temporarily insert electrodes into the patient’s brain. This requires immense accuracy because of the risk of damaging blood vessels or the parts of the brain that affect speech, vision and movement. Scientists from University College London and King’s have developed CT and MRI scans that produce very detailed three-dimensional maps of the brain. This allows the surgeon – with pinpoint accuracy – to see a safe route via which the electrodes can be implanted in the brain without causing damage. It is hoped this will make the procedure quicker, safer and easier.
Software for brain surgery
Professor Ourselin, Head of the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences and the academic leading the MedTech Hub project, told InTouch.
‘We will bring together clinicians, scientists, engineers, industry and regulatory advisers – all together on the same site. We have formed strong industry partnerships with large multinational companies and are actively encouraging start-ups and SMEs to work with us. Having them under the same roof can only further benefit our research.
Our ultimate goal is to improve patient outcomes. These technologies can take 10 to 15 years to reach the point where patients are reaping benefits, but, by having involvement from key stakeholders from the outset, we believe we can reduce this time to five years – or even three in some cases. This means more people will benefit sooner and that is critical. We will certainly see some impactful innovations being developed in our immediate future.’
Professor Sebastien Ourselin, Head of the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences and the academic leading the MedTech Hub project
As we go to press, the world is in the middle of a pandemic. One of the many challenges facing the UK Government is the need to rapidly increase the number of ventilators to treat people who are experiencing serious respiratory problems as a result of COVID-19.
King’s, working alongside colleagues at the University of Oxford, has designed a new ventilator to support efforts to increase the number of ventilators available to the NHS. The OxVent is robust, has few working parts (so is less likely to fail) and is easy to use. Most components are items already in the NHS supply chain. The design will exploit off-the-shelf components and equipment, with elements that can be produced through 3D printing techniques.
Professor Ourselin said: ‘The OxVent can be built in a few hours, is reasonable in price and complies with the specifications required by the MHRA – the body which, in the UK, regulates medicines and medical devices to ensure they are safe for use on patients.’
What will our efforts mean for patients in the future? The real game-changer is the bringing together of different sectors that each contribute to combining knowledge and expertise to benefit patients. Ultimately, healthcare engineering should lead to dramatic improvements in patient care: that is the overriding objective for St Thomas’ MedTech Hub.
As this exciting development unfolds, we look forward to sharing more stories of our healthcare engineering innovations with you.
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Good to see these multidisciplinary initiatives. I did my PhD (1987) in Kings Biophysics (then in Drury Lane) and my daughter is now studying Biomedical Engineering at Kings. I hope that, despite coronavirus, she and students just starting or completing this course will get the benefit of live lectures and practical experience during the coming year, to develop the necessary skills to continue projects like this.
Hi I was a Guy’s Nursing graduate 1971. I would really like to see a section for ‘previous’ graduates and an option for them to keep in touch with each other. Many like me have travelled around the world and I now live in NZ.
Great to see St Thomas Hospital again in the limelight. Did my postgrad Dermatology training there in 1993/1994!!
Congratulations to the team…..for this innovation and will certainly assist healthcare delivery in this time of crisis.
Need all hands on deck for the provision of the best care available ……research is certainly a vital component.
Such an important and incredible piece of work – thank you Professor Ourselin and everyone at King’s.