The future of poking and prodding in medicine
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The future of poking and prodding in medicine
Wed, 17/03/2021 - 13:30 to 14:30
Location:
Speaker:
Michael Crichton
Synopsis:
Many aspects of medical diagnosis and sensing have changed over the past few decades as advanced biosensors and blood tests have enabled earlier detection and treatment. However some of the detection methods that are still core in primary care involve poking, prodding and visual inspection. Within our Soft Tissue and Biomedical Devices Laboratory, we are trying to develop and refine these methods to give more continuous, sensitive and quantitative data from minimally invasive measurements. In this seminar, I will cover how our activities in this area are progressing including how we make use of tissue mechanics to develop sensors for tracking wound healing and for foetal health monitoring during labour. I will also discuss the various techniques that we have available in our lab which may be of wider interest across the School.
Biography:
Biography: Michael Crichton is an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Heriot-Watt University where he runs the Soft Tissue and Biomedical Devices Laboratory (STABD Lab, https://tissuedevices.hw.ac.uk/). His research interests lie in understanding how disease changes the material behaviour of biological tissues, and how we exploit these for innovative medical technologies. Michael’s background is multidisciplinary with an undergraduate degree in Aeronautical Engineering, followed by a PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Queensland. There he worked on a microneedle vaccine technology which led to a number of patents which were licenced to Vaxxas, a company established with $15m funding to commercialise this technology. Joining Vaxxas, Michael worked on a variety of projects and led device engineering aspects. He returned to academia and in 2017 joined Heriot-Watt University, where he has won funding to research wound healing sensors, mechanobiology and other medical microdevices. He loves the challenges and benefits from multidisciplinary research.