Innovation at the interface - Start-up of the year winner on the importance of working across disciplines

Chris Toumazou talks about the role of the newly-rehoused Institute of Biomedical Engineering - News - 22 December 2006

Friday 22 December 2006
By Laura Gallagher

Toumaz Technology, a company founded by Imperial's Professor Chris Toumazou , won the Start-up of the Year 2006 prize at the National Microelectronics Institute 10th Anniversary Awards, held last month.

The prestigious annual awards bring together stakeholders from across the microelectronics industry to recognise companies that have demonstrated excellence in design, manufacture and business.

We asked Professor Toumazou about Toumaz Technology and his work in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering.

You are based in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering - why do you think is it important for engineers and medics to work together?

It's really important to get the medical pull and engineering push. The basic ingredients of the Institute are medicine and engineering, and it's at the interface between these two that the real innovation and excitement lies, as well as some of the greatest inventions. For this reason, industry is very keen to participate in the planning and direction of our research programmes.

It's like learning an interdisciplinary language and although as an engineer my medical vocabulary is some what broken, the synergy between the two disciplines really does gel.

The Institute has recently moved into new premises. What are the advantages of this compared to your previous work-space?

At last we have an environment where chemists, physicists, biologists, engineers and medics can work together in the same lab, on large scale projects, with state of the art facilities. Providing an interdisciplinary hub for this to take place really creates an atmosphere of creativity at this important interface in healthcare.

The Institute provides space for PhD students registered in departments working together on large scale bio related programmes. It is well aligned with the medical school and through its strong medical links is able to translate technology straight into the medical arena. This is a unique feature of Imperial College.

When did Toumaz start up, and what kinds of products does the company make?

Toumaz started up in 2001, initially as a silicon radio chip company making very low power devices for mobile phones. In 2004 it spun out its radio division to Taiwan in a new company called Future Waves, and Toumaz Technology concentrated on ultra-low power medical devices.

Our latest product is a so-called ‘digital-plaster’. This is a small silicon nano power chip that sits inside a plaster and continuously monitors a patient’s vital signs, such as heart-rate, ECG, temperature and activity level and sends the information wirelessly to the hospital data bank via the mobile phone.

The device is intelligent and can work out facts such as heart-rate variables, or body temperature, before it sends an SMS to alert the GP.