Analysis: Bring on the health bots
Stuart Latham, partner and patent attorney at Withers & Rogers, explores the devices being used to track health and wellbeing and the role of patent protection in helping such start-ups to secure capital.
Inspired by the IoT, sensors and robotic devices are increasingly being used to track health and wellbeing. Widespread use of smart watches means users can now monitor their heart rates, blood pressure, sleep patterns and even how many calories they consume. Growing interest in such technology is inspiring the development of more ‘health bots’.
Whilst the use of robotics in healthcare has previously been limited to high-value hospital equipment, recent technological advances have allowed for its use in a wider range of applications, suitable for use in the home and/or in a clinical setting. The European Patent Office’s annual report indicates that European patents for medical technologies originating in the UK increased by 7.1% in 2017, indicating that it is one of the country’s major R&D activity focuses.
In August 2018, the ONS estimated that 26% of the UK population will be aged 65 and over by 2041. With this in mind, med-tech innovators are looking to create solutions that allow patients to look after their own health and receive treatment for medical conditions in their own homes.
A cluster of innovators are currently working to bridge the gap between clinical and domestic applications. For instance, the University of Bristol’s Sensing Platform for Healthcare in a Residential Environment (SPHERE) project has developed a platform of non-medical home sensors, serving as a prototype for future residential healthcare systems. The multi-modal SPHERE can capture diverse data in a variety of formats, allowing healthcare professionals to monitor patients in their own home.
Similarly, UK-based computer vision company, Skin Analytics, is developing technologies to improve the early diagnosis of melanomas. By building a digital history of a patient’s skin, potentially cancerous changes can be tracked over time and patients can monitor their own skin health via a smartphone app.
Meanwhile, Bristol-based Open Bionics has used 3D printing to develop the world's first, clinically-tested, medically-certified, and FDA-registered bionic arm, which is now available at prosthetics clinics across the UK. This multi-grip bionic limb is controlled electronically by the body’s own muscles and offers far more motion than standard prosthetic alternatives.
Internationally, in an equally futuristic move, Chinese company, Goodix Technology has developed an optical sensor which can be embedded in a bathroom mirror to monitor cardiovascular health. Its sensors monitor skin colour and other biomarkers, which might indicate a medical problem, before alerting additional sensors or wearable devices to perform a more comprehensive review of the individual’s health. This ‘review’ can provide the individual with more functional data about their own health than it is possible to gather from a short medical appointment.
While, researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Toronto have used computer vision algorithms to detect and rate levels of pain by looking at the facial expressions. If rolled out across the healthcare industry, this approach could allow medical professionals and care providers to classify patients’ pain more accurately, ensuring they get the right treatment at the right time.
From a medical perspective, the practice of robotic surgery has been dominated for many years by the Da Vinci surgical system, which was developed by US-based company, Intuitive Surgical. Da Vinci robots are regularly used to carry out prostate, bladder and gynaecological surgery in hospitals worldwide and have been extensively used in the UK since 2001. However, emerging technologies are now promising to take surgical robotics to the next level by making them more widely available at a lower price point and by introducing new areas of functionality, which could bring benefits for clinicians and patients alike.
For instance, the Versius robot, developed by CMR Surgical in the UK, can assist the surgeon in learning the process of suturing a wound in just 30 minutes, a process that would normally take around 80 hours. Other robotics systems could drastically reduce operating times, allowing surgeons to perform more surgical procedures in a shorter space of time, with the added benefits of shortened hospital stays and quicker recovery times. Rapidly-growing interest in this field of innovation has allowed disruptive start-ups to re-imagine the future of healthcare and develop software that can be used to personalise and administer healthcare services, according to the needs of the patient. As well as allowing faster symptom detection and facilitating sharper clinical decisions, such software could enable a patient’s health to be monitored remotely, allowing them to stay in the comfort of their own homes, whilst minimising use of healthcare resources.
Based on its growth potential, robotics is likely to remain at the forefront of med-tech innovation for many years to come and as demand grows, there is an opportunity for start-ups entering the market to secure a strong position. To gain a strong foothold, new entrants should seek patent protection for their inventions at an early stage. This will not only help them to secure the necessary investment to conduct clinical trials, according to research, it could also have a positive effect on their long-term business survival rate.
As we become more accustomed to health bots in a domestic and clinical setting, there is an opportunity to transform healthcare services and bring benefits for society as a whole.