Medical Engineering

However, it has become clear that long-term conditions such as asthma, diabetes and cancer are best managed by taking into account how the individual is responding to their particular therapy. At the Oxford Medical Engineering Centre, Professor Lionel Tarassenko and colleagues are developing techniques and strategies to precisely measure individuals' response to their condition and therapies, and using those measurements to adjust and improve the way the person is being treated. This approach could have real impact on survival rates and improve the quality of life for people living with long-term conditions, from birth to old age.

It is the most common cause of chronic pain and costs the country an estimated £5.5 billion every year directly and indirectly. The Centre at Imperial College London is developing technologies to improve the lives of patients with osteoarthritis. The team is creating the next generation of hip and knee replacement implants that will last longer and require less invasive surgery to fit. Tissue engineering also contributes hugely in this area, using patients' own cells to grow new cartilage for osteoarthritic knees. A better understanding of the disease will lead to new technologies to diagnose and treat osteoarthritis at a much earlier stage.

The Centre, led by Professor Ross Ethier, is creating products that can better detect and monitor osteoarthritis, that improve clinical intervention in the repair of joints damaged by the disease and that create new paradigms for rehabilitation of patients with osteoarthritis. It is bringing together engineers, surgeons, rehabilitation therapists, chemists, imaging scientists, computer scientists, materials scientists and cell biologists in order to create new products that bring real benefits to patients.

The Wellcome EPSRC Leeds Medical Engineering Centre (WELMEC) is looking at how to help the skeleton, muscles and cardiovascular system support our bodies as we get older, through improved prosthetic implants and technologies to help our tissues regenerate.

The team is also looking to understand the process of degeneration so its early stages can be accurately diagnosed and appropriate and timely interventions can be delivered. The Centre's work is all driven by the concept of 50 activeyears after 50 - making our second 50 years as healthy, comfortable and active as our first.
WELMEC, directed by Professor John Fisher, is enhanced by other funding sources, such as an EPSRC-funded Innovation and Knowledge Centre, which will take products into clinical trials, providing support all along the development pipeline.