Fellowship - Next Generation Endoscopes

This fellowship will allow me to lead the exploitation of optical fibre technology in the healthcare industry. My work will use relatively cheap starting materials for optical fibres developed for the telecommunications industry and apply them to applications within healthcare. This will allow me to produce low-cost endoscopic devices capable of diagnosing and treating a number of conditions. I will work closely with clinical professionals and the healthcare industry throughout projects to define and tackle challenges with a genuine clinical pull. The project which will be undertaken is to produce an endoscopic device which will significantly change the care pathway for a patient which has a potentially cancerous lung nodule. Current care is to monitor the nodule with scans (perhaps over a number of years) and look for changes which indicate it is cancerous. This leads to continued radiation exposure from the scans and anxiety as the patient will be living their life knowing they possibly have lung cancer. My device will be able to go into the lungs and accurately diagnose the nodule and then ablate it destroying it instantly completely transforming the patient experience.