The start line: Opportunities for SMEs at MTIF

Ian Bolland was given a tour of the Medical Technologies Innovation Facility at the Clifton Campus at Nottingham Trent University, finding out more about the opportunities there are for businesses to develop their products.

Medical Technologies Innovation Facility, or MTIF, provides a facility for two equally important stakeholders: the academics and students who have the opportunity to work on their research projects and develop new ideas, and commercial enterprises small, medium or large to hire so they can have a specialist facility to help develop and commercialise their products.

Featuring a bioactive surfaces laboratory, an imaging suite, ISO Class 6 white and yellow cleanroom space along with the resource to manufacture and demonstrate technological capabilities, it caters for both needs on the site.

Companies can manufacture their products at the facility, with 3D printing and other manufacturing machinery at their disposal, along with a dedicated imaging suite which contains equipment for testing and inspection from recognised brands including Zeiss, Leica and Olympus among the systems at their disposal. The imaging suite covers bioscience, engineering, sport science and physics among its subject areas.

Up to seven companies currently use the facility on a regular basis, including Design Matter who featured at this year’s Med-Tech Innovation Expo, but MTIF say there is room to accommodate more. In its proof-of-concept space alone there is room to accommodate up to three companies – depending on the size of the companies who’d enquire to use the space.

One of the innovations that has emerged from the facility was a t-shirt fitted with flexible, resin-printed sensors on fabric which can monitor vital signs, and other activity – something that could be used for sports organisations to gather fitness, compliance or rehabilitation data and any other health needs. The sensors are printed onto a standard t-shirt using a screen press – with the technology developed on thin film circuit boards that are adapted for screen printing with testing available on site. Testing can even go as far as to how many washes the t-shirt can endure – with the industry standard 34 the target.

While sport might be the obvious example, with sensors being able to cover everything to measure fatigue or to measure the impact a blow to the head by a participant wearing a helmet – there is a route to market for this kind of technology being used for monitoring patients – such as heart monitoring – in a more discreet manner. The textiles centre at the facility also included a medical sleeve which can be used for monitoring vital signs and encouraging rehabilitation through electronic stimulus – the device is being developed with more home care in mind.

These projects are overseen by Dr Yang Wei, associate professor of the School of Science & Technology at the university, and the lead of the Smart Wearable Research Group. Last year, engineers announced a project developing the smart textile arm sleeve to use electrical stimulation to reduce swelling and discomfort for patients with lymphoedema – made from a breathable fabric with integrated printed circuits and electrodes.

That’s just one example of the types of innovations taking place at the facility. MTIF also has also recently welcomed enquiries relating to their GMP C Cleanroom space and testing capabilities. This, along with the bioactive surfaces laboratory which is equipped with industrial scale genomic sequencers, also provides a space for those operating in the pharmaceutical and diagnostic space to complete their own projects, or with MTIF as a contractual research partner. The facility even has a BioXP DNA and mRNA printer – one of only four in the whole world! This fully auotomated machine can develop and print synthetic DNA and mRNA for research purposes.

Though the facility is based in Nottingham, there is already the scope for expansion, as MTIF is ensuring it connects with relevant organisations on both a national and international scale – connecting with hubs across the UK and going as far afield as China. On the more local scale, there is a second site two miles from the Clifton Campus as the Development Centre at Boots Enterprise Zone provides rentable validated, managed, and maintained laboratory and cleanroom space.