Latest News

Wideblue client wins Innovation Award

Innovative contact lens accessory company Viopti has been honoured at the prestigious John Logie Baird Awards for Innovation 2011. Viopti founder Alastair Knox was the outright winner of the Entrepreneurial Spirit Award.

Wideblue has been working closely with Viopti since 2009 to help develop the ContactsPod product line and business proposition.

Human tissue testing in medical and diagnostic device development

Wideblue and Biopta are combining their expertise to offer a medical device product design service using ethically-sourced fresh human tissue for development testing. Biopta are experts in sourcing and testing ethically donated human tissue samples.

The collaboration means that human tissue testing can be integrated throughout Wideblue’s product design process, from feasibility studies to verification testing. Wideblue and Biopta can undertake complete medical device design projects or provide specialist support to other design teams.

The use of human tissue means that design engineers no longer need to rely on oversimplified models of device to tissue interactions. By using fresh (non-frozen) tissues, reliable data can be obtained on mechanical, optical, mass transfer and fluid flow properties, and highly representative test models can be constructed.

Tissues that are available include skin, blood vessels, airways, gastrointestinal tract and bladder. Biopta already provides human tissue testing services to most major pharmaceutical companies for drug safety and efficacy and have recently seen increasing interest from medical device designers.

Wideblue and Biopta have been working in collaboration since 2004 when they designed and manufactured Biopta’s PM-1 instrument for automated analysis of the behaviour of living tissues in response to test drugs. They have since completed several confidential projects for medical device development.

Supporting medical device engineering students and graduates

Wideblue project manager Stuart Kelly joined the judging panel for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ 2011 medical engineering student competition. This is the foremost medical engineering student project competition in the UK, providing an opportunity for students and recent graduates to present their work and compete for cash awards.

The 2011 winners are:

• Vicon Prize for Best Medical Engineering Project: Rebecca Eden, Newcastle University
• MediMaton Prize for Best Medical Engineering PhD Thesis: David John Cottenden, University of Cambridge
• Corin Group Prize for Best Healthcare Technology Project: Euan McCaughey, University of Glasgow
• JRI Prize for Best Poster Competition: Caroline Eve Lynette Smith, University of Sheffield

Understanding the product opportunity

A new article by Wideblue features on the front page of the latest “Informing Business” publication from Nexxus, the Scottish life sciences network. The article discusses the ingredients required to successfully turn innovative technology into a market-ready medical device.

Computer Simulations in Bioengineering seminar – “Optical Analysis of Ambulight PDT”

Stuart Kelly, Wideblue Project Manager, has been invited to speak at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ forthcoming seminar on Computer Simulations in Bioengineering. The seminar will present state-of-the-art computational technology applied to the medical engineering field and takes place on 16th March 2011 at IMechE Headquarters, London.

Stuart previously presented a paper at the same seminar in 2006, “Development of complex, injection-moulded medical devices”, showing case studies of computational stress analysis and fluid-flow simulations applied to reduce risk and timescales in the medical device design process.

This year, the presentation will focus on computer simulation of optical physics, with specific reference to Ambicare Health’s recently launched Ambulight PDT product, the first light-emitting plaster for skin cancer treatment.