Sahlgrenska and Chalmers- a never ending story celebrated during the Engineering Health Days

The initiative seminar Engineering Health – The Legacy of William Chalmers on 8-9 November 2017 gathered a large number of engineers and clinicians (and others!) with one strong interest in common: to bring medicine and engineering closer together.

The programme stretched from the past, to the present and into future challenges. Many short pair-presentations provided an overview of ongoing collaborations. These featured local, as well as international, researchers who have succeeded in establishing translational activities.There were a lot of evidence shown on how academia, industry and health care jointly collaborate for mutual progress, for the benefit of patients. Round table discussions and other activities provided plenty of networking opportunities.

The initiative seminar was a collaboration between Sahlgrenska University hospital, AstraZeneca, Chalmers, University of Gothenburg and MedTech West. The first day was held at Chalmers and the following day took place at AstraZeneca in Mölndal.

Below you´ll find a collage with pictures from some of the presentations. If you want to see more, there is a link at the end to the original article. Text and pictures in the following sections belong to Chalmers and is written by Yvonne Jonsson.

Stents was the subject in the presentation given by Mårten Falkenberg, Sahlgrenska, and Håkan Nilsson, Chalmers: “Air bubble release and flow-induced forces in stent grafts”.
They also clearly pointed out the benefits of collaboration, listed according to their experience. Among Chalmers´ strengths are technologies, physics, mechanical as well as mathematical models, and analysis of results. Sahlgrenska, on the other hand, has expertise in life science problems, offers a clinical testbed and patient feedback, and is prominent in epidemiology.

Three flagships of medtech research, originating from Gothenburg, presented themselves. First in line was Max Ortiz Catalán from Chalmers, who gave a talk on “The future of bionic limbs: osseointegration and neural control”. In his research, conducted together with Rickard Brånemark, previously at Sahlgrenska but now at University of California, San Francisco, the world´s first mind-controlled arm prosthesis was developed, now regarded by the patient as a body part more than an external device. A coming research project is focused on feedback and doing the same with a leg; neuromuscular control of robotic leg prostheses.

Mikael Elam, Sahlgrenska, and Mikael Persson, Chalmers, are co-inventors of the stroke helmet Strokefinder and share many research projects in the field of traumatic brain injury and stroke. They presented “A Sahlgrenska Chalmers collaborative effort around Stroke and trauma”.
They also emphasized the importance of MedTech West as a network and collaborative platform for research, education, development and evaluation of new biomedical concepts and technologies. The focus is on addressing actual clinical needs in collaboration with relevant clinical staff, and to initiate, facilitate and promote increased research collaboration between the health care sector, industry and academia.

A garment with integrated sensors, from the smart textiles project “WearIT” was shown by Kristina Malmgren from Sahlgrenska and Leif Sandsjö from MedTech West/University of Borås.

Textiles that monitor health or measure movements was also the subject also for Nils-Krister Persson, Smart Textiles Technology Lab, Borås University, and Anja Lund from Chalmers in their presentation “Chalmers Textiles as enabler for Engineering Health”. Amongst other things they defined the differences between medical textiles, medtech textiles and hygiene textiles. The presentation also included information about research on compression sensitive gastro intestinal stents, where a strain-sensing thread can be integrated in the stent to sense both position and amplitude of deformations.