Wearable sensor that listens to the bowel could get patients home sooner
Birmingham researchers are collaboratively developing a device that will help determine when patients can be safely discharged following bowel surgery.
Alistair Foster, one of the founders of Ademen Limited, and Dr Matthew Lee, a clinical academic from University of Birmingham and University Hospitals Birmingham, posing with the device and a patient simulator.
Through the National Institute of Health and Social Care Research (NIHR) Invention for Innovation (i4i) Programme, researchers from the University of Birmingham are collaborating with six organisations including colleagues at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB), patient representatives, and Ademen Limited, a local health tech company, to improve monitoring of bowel surgery patients.
Together, the collaborators are developing Ademen’s wearable sensor which monitors the patterns of bowel sounds.
“We hope that the device will help us to work out who we can discharge safely and early after surgery. It may also help us determine who is at risk of developing complications with the bowel after surgery."
Working with the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre Devices, Digital and Robotics (DDR) facility at UHB, the team plan to complete assessment of the new device in 100 healthy volunteers. The device will then be tested in a clinical setting with people who have had bowel surgery.
Each year, at least 250,000 people undergo major surgery on their abdomen in the UK. This can be planned surgery for cancers such as colon cancer, or emergencies for blocked bowels. Most people who have major surgery on their abdomen will have a period where their gut does not work properly before recovering. Most people will recover from this within a few days, but this will last longer for some people and may cause additional problems. If doctors can work out who is likely to recover quickly, they can focus on helping them get fit to go home soon. It may also be possible to identify people who will take longer to recover, allowing health professionals to look for and treat problems early, helping to speed up recovery post-surgery.
The NIHR Invention for Innovation (i4i) Programme is a translational research funding scheme aimed at medical devices, in vitro diagnostic devices and digital health technologies addressing an existing or emerging health or social care need.
Midlands-based Ademen is a SME that is developing health technology that enables continuous, non-invasive monitoring of gut activity. Their devices aim to combine advanced sensor technology with intelligent data analysis, to bring objective insight to an area of medicine that has long relied on observation and delay.
The i4i funding was awarded to Ademen to undertake further development and testing of their POISE device through collaboration with the University of Birmingham and other expert groups including the NIHR DDR group, to move it closer to clinical practice and helping patients,
“Working with experts at the University of Birmingham such as Dr Lee will bring rapid development of our product, meaning it can support the recovery of more people sooner, improving outcomes and reducing the personal and financial cost of complications in recovery,” explains Dr Foster, from Ademen Limited.