Nine researchers, working on innovative projects that promise to improve healthcare diagnosis and treatment, across a wide spread of issues, were today announced as the first recipients of the EPSRC's Healthcare Technologies Challenge Awards.

Their projects range from developing new ways of examining sperm to smart wound dressings that incorporate sensors, to tools to improve imaging, diagnosis and drug delivery to treat cancers.

The award winners will share in a £9 million fund allocated to support a cohort of next generation research leaders to establish a personal programme of high quality, creative, and multidisciplinary research across the EPSRC portfolio, and to build and grow their research groups.
The researchers will work with clinicians, companies and charities to speed up the process of translation and clinical adoption of their innovations, and to help them design their research so the barriers to its implementation in healthcare are minimal.

Life Sciences Minister George Freeman MP said: “From fertility diagnostics to disease detection, these award-winning projects - supported by Government's £6bn annual science budget - are great examples of how interdisciplinary collaboration can achieve game-changing results. By linking patients, technologists, clinicians and scientists, new tools and techniques to improve healthcare can be truly innovative which is why the UK is a world leader in life sciences.”

EPSRC’s Chief Executive, Professor Philip Nelson, said: “These Healthcare Technologies Challenge Award winners are our future research leaders who will be instrumental in ensuring the UK can meet the 21st century healthcare needs and thrive as a healthy nation.”

Below are short descriptions of each of the projects in the researchers own words:-

David Smith, University of Birmingham - Rapid Sperm Capture
Infertility affects around one in six couples. Problems with sperm (swimming ability, abnormal shape) are one of the major causes. Treatment is difficult because diagnostics are imprecise; ‘sperm counting’ does not yet make use of cutting edge technologies. This project will bring together expertise from computing, maths, bioengineering and the clinic to develop a new device to examine sperm. The system will detect which sperm have the ‘right stuff’ – the ability to deliver a cargo of safely-packaged DNA to the egg – and to convert this information into better treatment decisions, saving distress and expense, and leading to more healthy births.

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