Disruptive Semiconductor Technologies for Advanced Healthcare Systems

该平台补助金的主要目的是支持我们对个性化医疗设备的研究愿景。这些设备将为许多疾病的诊断和管理带来革命性的变化，显著提高医疗保健的成本效益，并最终挽救生命。在过去的十年里，我们一直在发展生物医学工程研究所（IBE）在帝国理工学院伦敦作为一个世界领先的中心，这一多学科的研究计划。在这里，我们将半导体技术中最好的电子工程技能与特定的传感接口相结合，以创建新型医疗设备，并与临床医生密切合作进行开发和测试。这笔赠款将为我们现有的多学科团队提供继续工作所需的关键支持，并在颠覆性半导体医疗保健技术领域保持强大的国际知名地位。成功开发和部署新的医疗保健技术有三个关键组成部分：（1）具有关键技能和专业知识组合的优秀团队（电子、材料、物理、化学、生物、医学），（2）专业设备和工具（例如用于设计电子芯片/芯片上实验室的Cadence工具，与微芯片接口的仪器，测试这些设备的湿实验室），以及（3）与关键利益相关者的强有力互动，包括临床/工业合作伙伴，如公共/私人卫生机构、中小企业（如科学公司、DNA电子公司）和跨国公司（如葛兰素史克、罗氏、英特尔）。我们的团队开发并成功整合了所有三个组件，创造了新的技术和设备，包括第一个完全植入式人工耳蜗，无线生命体征监测系统，下一代DNA测序技术和糖尿病人工胰腺。平台补助金将为早期研究提供支持，使我们能够探索几个新的战略研究方向，我们能够产生重大影响。这些新的研究领域包括：使用离子敏感晶体管和呼吸分析进行癌症诊断的两种新方法，用于细菌菌株鉴定的DNA技术，以及集成到半导体器件中的生物传感器。我们还计划引入两个全新的概念，用于非侵入性大规模记录神经活动，这将有助于我们更好地了解人类大脑。构建可持续发展的未来是该集团的重要目标。平台资助将有助于保持和进一步发展我们集团的独特能力。这将使我们能够保留一些关键的研究人员和他们的专业知识（如CMOS和芯片实验室设计和测试，生物传感器等），同时帮助他们发展独立的研究事业，并形成下一代世界级的科学家。最后，这个平台将使我们能够与世界领先的神经修复学临床和技术专家一起参与建立一个关于“人-仿生界面”的主要全球网络，并在自适应，我们的目标是，我们在这些新的战略方向的研究将最终提供新的研究设备和工具，以及新的诊断和治疗技术.通过建立在硅微芯片的可靠性、可扩展性和处理能力的基础上，这些技术将是可大规模生产和高度便携的。因此，我们希望在解决我们这一代人面临的一些最大挑战方面做出重要贡献：了解癌症并如何控制它，如何科普日益耐药的细菌的新菌株，以及如何解决大脑疾病中日益严重的问题。

The central aim of this Platform Grant is to support our research vision of personalised healthcare devices. These devices will make transformative changes in the diagnostics and management of many diseases, significantly improve the cost effectiveness of healthcare and ultimately save lives. For the last ten years we have been developing the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBE) at Imperial College London as a world-leading center for this multidisciplinary research initiative. Here we combine the best electronics engineering skills in semiconductor technology with specific sensory interfaces to create new types of medical devices, developed and tested in close collaboration with clinicians. This grant will provide our existing multidisciplinary team with the critical support required to continue its work and sustain a strong, internationally renowned position in disruptive semiconductor healthcare technology. There are three key components to successful development and deployment of a new healthcare technology: (1) an excellent team with key combinations of skills and expertise (in electronics, materials, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine), (2) specialist equipment and tools (such as Cadence tools for designing electronic chips/lab on chips, instrumentation to interface with the microchips, wet labs to test these devices), and (3) strong interaction with key stakeholders including clinical/industrial partners, such as public/private health institutions, SMEs (e.g. Scientifica, DNA electronics) and multinationals (e.g. GSK, Roche, Intel). Our group has developed and successfully integrated all three components to create new technologies and devices, including the first totally implantable cochlear prosthesis, a wireless vital signs monitoring system, a next generation DNA sequencing technology, and an artificial pancreas for diabetes. The Platform Grant will provide support for early stage research, enabling us to explore several new strategic research directions in which we are capable of making a major impact. These new areas of investigation include: two novel approaches to cancer diagnostics using ion-sensitive transistors and breath analysis, DNA technology for bacterial strain identification, and biosensors integrated into semiconductor devices. We also plan to introduce two entirely new concepts for non-invasive large-scale recording of neural activity, which will help us to better understand the human brain.Building a sustainable future is an important goal for the group. The platform grant will be instrumental in maintaining and further developing our group's unique capability. It will allow us to retain some key researchers and their expertise (such as CMOS and lab-on-chip design and testing, biosensors, etc) while helping them to develop their independent research careers and form the next generation of world-class scientists. Finally, this platform will allow us to participate in establishing a major worldwide network on "Human-Bionic Interface" together with world leading clinical and technology experts in neuroprosthetics, as well as to establish new collaborations in adaptive, assistive and rehabilitative technologies.Our aim is that our research in these new strategic directions will ultimately provide new research devices and tools as well as new diagnostic and treatment technologies. By building on the reliability, scalability and processing power of silicon microchips, these technologies will be mass-producible and highly portable. Thus we expect to make important contributions in solving some of the greatest challenges of our generation: understanding cancer and how to control it, how to cope with new strains of increasingly antibiotic-resistant bacteria and how to tackle growing problems in the brain disorders.