One in ten babies need assistance with their breathing at birth i.e. 77,000/year (UK), 14 million/year worldwide. The reasons for this include being born too early or with unexpected birthing problems. Babies receiving optimal treatment quickly and efficiently will generally go on to lead normal lives, however, those where this is not the case are at risk of long-term problems including brain damage. Healthcare professionals have several ways in which they can help sick newborn babies, but they also need ways of assessing when to start these treatments and how well they are working. They do this by measuring the baby's heart-rate (HR), oxygen levels and making sure their temperature is stable during this critical time. Currently, the stethoscope is the usual method for checking HR, but the baby's heartbeat can be weak and therefore in such a stressful environment it is known that errors occur. Pulse oximeters, instruments used to measure oxygen levels, can be awkward to apply and take as long as 5-10 minutes to provide accurate information. Temperature is not routinely monitored and this can mean babies get cold affecting recovery and even increase the risk of dying. Once stable after birth, there are considerable long-term benefits of skin-to-skin contact between parents and baby. However, there are barriers because they need to be monitored and warm, but many wires from different devices makes this challenging. We have started to address these limitations by designing a unique soft cap containing a small and safe, wireless optical sensor that measures newborn HR whilst keeping the newborn warm. This monitor is already approved for use in UK, Europe and America. We now wish to give healthcare professionals, caring for the most vulnerable high-risk babies another advanced device with extended features including ECG, oxygen levels and temperature. It will also make it easier and more natural for parents to have the essential delivery room skin-to-skin care knowing their baby is safely monitored. This new multi-function device, complementing our advanced cap, will be a safe and gentle, **chest mounted, wearable,** multi-sensor, wireless **patch** aimed at improving a baby's long-term outcome. The benefits of this patch include improved information for healthcare professionals when they need it, a better parental skin-to-skin experience post birth, and improved patient safety. We estimate after five years that this technology will benefit the lives of ~439,000 babies and their parents/year.

Awaiting Public Project Summary

Raising poultry for meat is a large industry which is highly regulated by government and quality assurance bodies, due to consumer concerns about animal welfare and health and safety of meat products. To help farmers meet such regulations a consortium has designed a product to monitor the welfare of chickens and the environmental conditions of barns in which they are housed. The consortium aims to turn the design of this all-in-one environmental and welfare monitoring system into a tried and tested product. The product will help farmers more closely monitor and respond to changes in chickens’ environment or welfare. It will improve existing legal and quality assurance requirements by providing real-time monitoring and will provide up-to-date advice to famers on how they can create better, more productive environments for their chickens. This innovative product will help farmers to more easily comply with regulations, whilst improving welfare and maintaining a healthy profit.

Approximately 10% of newborns require some form of resuscitation at birth, for example because the baby doesn’t begin breathing after delivery. If babies are not resuscitated effectively they can suffer a range of poor outcomes, for example cerebral palsy due to low oxygen levels. Effective resuscitation is guided by changes in heart rate (HR). Current methods of assessing HR (via a stethoscope) are prone to error, interrupt resuscitation or only give HR after too long (1-2 mins). SurePulse is a platform technology for monitoring HR whose effectiveness has already been studied on 210 babies. The objectives, for this joint clinical, design and engineering team, are to integrate the SurePulse optical sensor into a single use newborn hat and undertake clinical studies on newborn babies. The hat will enable clinicians to resuscitate ‘hands-free’, reduce delays and errors, and so improve resuscitation outcomes, giving newborn babies the best start to life.

Growing urban populations and a shrinking land base means that the global level of food production will need to increase over the next 30 - 40 years and this will need to occur in the face of an unpredictable climate and lowered resource availability. Precision agriculture will play an important role in alleviating these problems and here we propose the novel use of plant sensors combined with efficient Light Emitting Diode (LED) arrays to increase the efficiency of crop growth in horticulture. We also propose the use of cutting edge genetics to assist with breeding tomato plants for high efficiency under LEDs. LEDs are set to replace existing horticultural lighting sources (such as sodium lamps) due to their low cost, long lifespan and high energy efficiency. We sit at a point where the uptake is yet to occur on a large scale so the market is potentially large and we expect new agri- markets to open as a result of the low cost and low infrastructure requirements of LEDs. We propose the novel use of plant sensors in combination with LED lamps to improve the energy efficiency of LEDs further. We will use spectral reflectance and chlorophyll fluorescence to assess plant area, photosynthetic functioning and 'health'. Data from these sensors will be supplied to a control unit that will modulate the output of the LEDs according to the requirements of the plant (leaf green area, photosynthetic capacity etc). It will also allow the grower to 'speed up' or 'slow down' the rate of growth to alter time to market and provide some novel possibillities for adjusting the morphology of the crop since the individual wavelengths will be tuneable. These adjustments will permit the optmisation of LED output, reducing energy costs.

To develop and commercialise a system for the monitoring of workers' wellbeing (Worker Wellbeing Monitoring System) in high-risk industrial environments.