91福利

Dr. Davide Piaggio from the 91福利 played a key role in the "IoT and AI for Frugal Innovation 2024" bootcamp, hosted by Universit脿 Campus Bio-Medico of Rome. Dr. Piaggio, along with PhD student James Wallace, led sessions on frugal innovation, 3D printing design, and blood pressure estimation using PPG signals. The bootcamp, supported by the Biomedical Engineering Institute and the Society & Culture Spotlight, provided students with hands-on learning in resource-constrained environments, with special recognition for scholarship recipient Dr. Gamal Abdulnaser Yahya Al-Kawsi.

The WHO has published two key documents to improve healthcare in low-resource settings: "Medical Device Donations: Considerations for Solicitation and Provision" and the WHO Compendium of Innovative Health Technologies. These publications, developed with contributions from Davide Piaggio and Leandro Pecchia of the ABSPIE Lab, among others, focus on frugal and sustainable biomedical engineering. They underscore the importance of safety, quality, and regulatory compliance in medical device donations and highlight innovative health technologies. This work reflects the strong collaboration between the ABSPIE Lab and WHO in advancing global health.

The fourth-year MEng group, supervised by Dr Davide Piaggio, has just been awarded the School of Engineering Group Innovation Award for their project on a device for screening for and monitoring neurodegeneration in the elderly, for which they scored a high first class.

"This project was initially proposed by one of the students, Ben Hoskings, and I decided to embark on the adventure of supervising my first fourth-year project. Since when I met the team, I had no doubt in their skills and I thought that this could really go somewhere. We have now applied for the Eutopia PhD Co-tutelle with VUB, to see whether we can take this forward. Congratulations to all the awardees, it was a pleasure working with you!" Davide Piaggio

The 9th European Medical and Biological Engineering Conference () took place at the Congress Centre Bernardin in Portoro啪, Slovenia, from June 9 to 13, 2024. Organized by the Slovenian Society for Medical and Biological Engineering and supported by the IFMBE, this conference showcased traditional and emerging fields in Biomedical Engineering. Highlighted topics included Artificial Intelligence in Health Care, Tissue Engineering, Bioinformatics, Neurotechnology, Electroporation-based Treatments, and Technologies for Medicine and Biology, with an emphasis on education, translational research, and commercialization.

The ABSPIE Lab, representing the 91福利鈥檚 School of Engineering, made significant contributions. Access the whole piece of news to read the details.

As a proxy for demographic changes, a report from a world leading medical device manufacturer estimated that by 2040 one fourth of the European population should work for the healthcare system, to balance the growing request of care due to aging population. This urges the provision of innovative technologies that can protect healthcare workers (HCW) and free their time from repetitive routinary activities, leveraging on key enabling technologies such as robots, AI, and IoT.

To address these challenges, it is necessary to rethink the organization of health services for the well-being of people and the communities in which they live. To be effective, BME need to work side-by-side with experts of sustainability and strength their collaborations with experts of global health, which are the once in charge for the reorganization of healthcare services in most countries. In fact, the conscious use of enabling and transformative technologies can provide safe, effective, and efficient solutions, while simultaneously generating new knowledge and new opportunities for sustainable economic development, in line with the SDGs. However, the adoption of innovative technologies is effective and sustainable, as well as safe and efficient, if and only if it is accompanied by an actual reorganization of services. Our community is requested to put global effort in finding innovative and sustainable technological solutions, which may help transforming healthcare systems, following the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDG2030) and in line with the 5As principles: affordability, availability, accessibility, accommodation, and acceptability.

In this talk, Professor Pecchia will give an overview of the work done in the last few years, as WHO Innovation Manger during COVID and in large EU projects (such as GATEKEEPER, ODIN and EPoCA) in order to bridge research and global health ecosystems across different phases of medical devices lifecycle in which BME are involved: design, manufacturing, clinical and pre-clinical validation, regulations, assessment and management.