Developing quantum powered health sensors for home use

Published: 14 March 2018

IHW's Frances Mair, Emma McIntosh and Katie Gallacher and ICAM's Terry Quinn are part of team that has been awarded £5.5M to develop quantum powered health sensors for home use

IHW's Prof Frances Mair (General Practice and Primary Care) together with Prof Emma McIntosh (Health Economics and Health Technology Assessment) and Dr Katie Gallacher (General Practice and Primary Care) and Dr Terry Quinn from the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences have been awarded £5.5M from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in a collaborative project with the College of Science and Engineering to develop quantum powered health sensors for home use.

We are one of six university led projects to share £32M of funding from the EPSRC’s Transformative Healthcare Technologies for 2050 funding call. The Healthcare Quest programme will find new ways to use quantum technologies to directly monitor health markers like blood flow, heart rate, movement and potentially even brain function in people’s own homes.

Image of health technology

Reacting to news of this important award, Professor Mair said:

“I am very excited about the project which will be developing entirely new and ambitious technologies for use in homes. The technologies will be developed in partnership with patients, the public and practitioners in order to ensure their future utility and usability by a broad range of users, ensuring that the digital health technologies developed are widely accessible. I’m feeling a bit like Dr McCoy from Star Trek! We will be using quantum technologies to measure things unobtrusively and the potential is vast.”

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First published: 14 March 2018