HEALTH SPECIAL
"Bios, a specialist in neural engineering, has come up with an interface that allows computers to communicate with the brain"
many believe this more personalised approach could soon leave the traditional drug companies and their blockbuster drugs on the sidelines. Cambridge has long been a global centre of excellence when it comes to medtech, with the city’s plethora of design consultancies churning out devices and algorithms to combat a wide range of diseases. Meanwhile, support agencies such as Health Enterprise East and its medtech consultancy are on hand to help entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life. Bios A USB port in your body might sound like a gimmicky way of charging your phone on the go, but there’s a serious application for it, which is being developed by the Cambridge start-up, Bios. A specialist in neural engineering, Bios has come up with
cross the globe, healthcare systems are coming under increased strain, with a
growing and ageing population meaning resources are stretched more thinly than ever before. Technology has long been hailed as the solution to many of the problems facing doctors as they deal with a catalogue of chronic conditions, and now a new generation of entrepreneurs is ready to bring about a healthcare revolution. Alongside the novel devices and apps that will give patients more control of their own treatment, advances in artificial intelligence and compute power mean analysing big data sets to discover new therapies or pinpoint the most effective treatments is becoming easier than ever before. The medtech market is already pretty hefty, generating revenue of $405bn worldwide in 2018, and
an interface that allows computers to communicate with the brain. The initial application the company identified for this was the Prosthetic Interface Device (PID), a universal port, like a USB, designed to allow amputees to connect a range of prostheses directly to their nervous system. Bios hopes the PID will begin clinical trials in the not-so-distant future, but now the company – co-founded by Cambridge graduates Emil Hewage and Oliver Armitage – is expanding its horizons, looking at areas such as neuroceuticals: artificial
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ISSUE 03
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