MEDILINK SHINES A
LIGHT WITH CHARITY
APPOINTMENT
Medilink Yorkshire & Humber are proud to
announce our charity partner - Candlelighters
Candlelighters do exceptional work supporting
children with cancer and their families throughout
Yorkshire and the charity spends over £500,000
on research annually into the causes and potential
treatments of children’s cancer.
Medilink will support Candlelighters by being the
chosen charity for the ‘Yorkshire and Humber
Healthcare Business Awards 2017’ also through
Medilink’s Membership referral scheme.
Jason Brannan, Medilink and Brian Curran, Candlelighters
INNOVATIVE APPROACH
TO SOLVE MEDICAL
USABILITY PROBLEM
Medilink member Inspired Usability a ‘Human
Factors’ (HF) consultancy, recently conducted a
series of user studies in the homes of end users to
better understand the interaction between service
and user.
Conducting studies within the homes of people needing
care has allowed home care based digital start-up
‘Konnektis’ to directly access both the people and the
context in which the service is planned to be used.
Konnektis is a digital platform that allows real-time
communication between carers, service users and
family members to both co-ordinate services and
encourage better collaboration.
NEWS
WORKSHOP STIMULATES
COLLABORATIVE
INNOVATION
Medilink worked with the Colorectal Therapies HTC in
an innovation workshop, funded by the Y&H Academic
Health Science Network - aimed at stimulating new
collaborative projects designed to address unmet
clinical needs.
Medilink worked closely with the Colorectal Therapies
team led by Professor David Jayne to identify companies
that have complementary expertise to that of the main
technical themes of the HTC – and acting as a match
making service paired Associate Professor Peter Culmer
(Engineering Theme Lead) with Single Use Surgical,
a Barnsley based company that develops single use
products for the operating theatre.
In response to an unmet need around complications,
related to tissue trauma caused by existing surgical
graspers, the team generated ideas around developing
atraumatic sensory graspers that would minimise the
risk of harm to the patient. This is an enabling technology
and methodology to understand:
a) how tissue trauma occurs
b) how it can be avoided through improved design and
instrumentation
This will have utility in many surgical areas involving the
manipulation of delicate soft tissues, including general
surgery and obstetrics.
The project commenced in the spring of 2016 and the
team recruited Dushyant Goordyal, an engineer with
experience in medical device development (Roche,
Switzerland) and a first degree from Imperial College,
to progress the project. The team have identified an
opportunity to apply this technology in obstetrics
which addresses a clear clinical need, leverages
the university’s research base in soft materials and
instrumentation and aligns with the commercial focus
of Pelican Feminine Healthcare (who recently acquired
Single Use Surgical).
See centre page feature for more information on
Collaborative Innovation
Miranda Newbery, head of ‘Inspired Usability’ says:
“Running studies is a great way of uncovering specific
usability issues during the design process, but if you
want to learn more about the intricacies of how a
device or service will work in the messy real world
then carrying out home based interviews over a period
of time provides much richer insight.
“There aren’t many companies in the North capable of
deploying this skillset to the medical device market, so
I’m looking forward to growing my business up here.”
07