Sensing Technology Driving the Development of Precision Medicine and Digital Healthcare

Discovery of the links between genetics and diseases made it possible to tailor future medical cares into personalised, precise interventions and promptly, e.g., Precision Medicine approach. Recent advances in sensors and IoT technologies greatly enriched the content of the Precision Medicine beyond the narrow “omics” driven schemes and into diagnostics (sensing) guided, precise and digital care domain. They are also opening up new opportunities for the development of smart future digital healthcare system.

To better connect relevant sensor community, end-users, innovators, and other stakeholders in Precision Medicine and Digital Health, and promote partnership/ collaborations and innovation development, KTN delivered the 50th Intelligent Sensing Program – Sensing in Precision Medicine and Digital Health, a dedicated virtual event on sensing technologies in precision medicine and digital health. The virtual event consisted of three specific webinars on market challenges and opportunities, state of art sensing technologies, and emerging novel sensing technologies.

KTN is UK’s business innovation networking organisation with a key mission to connect innovators with new partners and new opportunities beyond their existing thinking to accelerate ambitious ideas into real-world solutions. It provides a variety of activities associated with networking and knowledge transfers to promote and support the UK’s business innovation developments.

The Market, Challenges and Opportunities – Technology Development and Trend

The first ISP50 webinar, delivered on the 13th of October, focused on key themes related to market challenges and trends of technology development.

In this webinar, Keith Errey, the CEO of the Isansys Lifecare opened up the scene with an overviewing talk on future healthcare needs and technology trends, “The Tricorder is dead, Long Live the Tricorder”. In his talk, he highlighted the development trends of wearables, Artificial Intelligence, connected and intelligent digital healthcare system, etc.

Following up with Keith’s presentation, Ken Sutherland, the President of Canon Medical Research Europe reviewed on numerous of medical imaging technologies and their development trend, particularly those related to Radiology and Imaging Diagnostics, such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, and Big-data analytics in his talk of “Market Needs and Technology Development Trend in Precision Medicine and Digital Health”.

Subsequently, Prof Richard Luxton, Director of the Institute of Bio-Sensor Technologies, University of West England, presented a comprehensive review on a variety of biosensor technologies, their applications in healthcare, and also key development trends in a talk entitled as “Biosensor Technologies for Healthcare”.

State of the Art of Sensing Technologies for Precision Medicine & Digital Health

The second ISP50 webinar, delivered on 14th October, focused on the schemes of state-of-the-art sensing technologies for precision medicine and digital health.

Charles Nduka, Chief Scientific Officer at Emteq, introduced a new development of using digital phenotyping technology for disease detections in his “Digital phenotypic market from wearable sensors: depression and Parkinson’s diseases” talk.

Mustafa Alhamdi, a Data Scientist at Innovative Physics, presented his company’s work on developing AI technologies for healthcare data analytics and disease detections in a talk of “Deep machine learning models for Cancer detection”.

Andy Cachaldora, a General Manager (Digital Service N. Europe) at GE Healthcare also discussed on how data and advanced digital technologies are bringing benefits to the healthcare and services in his subsequent talk, the “Data Power: Tomorrow’s demand met today”.

Emerging & Novel Sensing Technologies for Precision Medicine & Digital Health

The last ISP50 webinar, delivered on the 15th of October, focused on novel and emerging sensing technologies in precision medicine and digital health development.

Anna Luisa Schaffgotsch, the CEO of Impli, presented the company’s effort in developing implantable technologies and app solutions to enable future healthcare staff to be able to obtain patient’s vital medical information rapidly and promptly in her talk of “Implantable technologies for medical care”.

Xize Niu, Director and Founder of the SouthWestSensors, reported on a novel microfluidic sensing technology – a segmental flow which the company is commercialising and its potential for precision medicine applications in his subsequent talk, the “Segmental microfluidic sensing technology for precision medicine”.

Melissa Berthelot, the Founder of the WarnerPatch, discussed their work in developing AI-based advanced data analytics and augmented decision-making technologies for clinicians to achieve remote monitoring of patients’ symptoms via novel and connected medical devices in her final talk on “AI advanced data analytics and augmented decision making for clinicians”.

During the three days, 12 specialist companies gave short technology elevator pitches to showcase the sensing technologies they are developing to the ISP50 participants.

An online networking facility was also available to all attendees which enabled them to engage, network or arrange 1:1 virtual meetings with other delegates.

Find out more about our activity in the sensors sector here.