President: Prof. Christopher Stephens FRCGP
A meeting of the Southampton Medical Society was held on the 1st May 2024 at the Ampfield Golf Club. The President was in the chair. The minutes of the last meeting were approved.
The President introduced the speakers Prof. Neil White, Dr Harry Ackerman and Dr Rod Lane. They spoke to the title “Novel Wearable Sensors and the Challenges of getting them to market”. They each described their part in developing low cost and lightweight wearable sensors. In 2008 they went to a local firm, iProms, to develop software for a new sensor. The main difficulty in their way was one of accuracy. The Key design features were: Easy to set up; Accurate; socially acceptable; comfortable to wear for long periods; an acceptable price point; must have App control and, to top it all, be the size of a £1 coin! A big problem was that the grant they received to develop such an instrument, half a million pounds over three years, had to be done in the University and not in a hospital. There is research that shows that patients who had an increased respiration rate were at a greater risk of dying. The new sensor would have to be able to detect the increase in respiration rate, give an alert when the O2 saturation began to fall and also recording the passage of time.
NASA had developed electronic sensors for Mars roamers that recorded the speed and movement of the robotic arm of the Mars Rover. This was a starting point for our team to set about developing their new sensor to record respiratory rates accurately. Counting respiratory rates is notoriously difficult. They arranged for medical students in the gym on static bikes to wear the new sensor and compare it with other sensors and normal observation. The PneumoRater, as it is to be called, eventually became much better than the opposition. It is in its final trials at present and the hope is that it will be accepted into clinical anaesthetic practice in the near future.
The President thanked the speaking team. He considered the development of the science behind their invention was fascinating and very interesting.