A group of University of Bath students is creating a working artificial heart as part of a global competition to nurture the next generation of medical innovators.
Team Bath Heart is aiming to design, prototype and test the device, pictured, for the worldwide ‘Heart Hackathon’, the final of which takes place in Texas in October.
Made up of electrical, mechanical and robotics engineering students, the 30-strong student-led team, pictured below, will compete against representatives from seven countries including Australia, Egypt, Sweden and the US as the UK’s sole representatives.
Artificial hearts are already used in medicine to treat patients with certain cardiovascular diseases, usually while waiting for a donor heart to be found, or to help their heart recover.
The Heart Hackathon competition aims to build real-world skills, with competitors tasked with designing, prototyping and evaluating their own ‘total artificial heart’ before their efforts are judged by international experts.
The device must be able to do the whole job of a native heart – going beyond the capability of a ventricular assist device, which only augments the function of one chamber of the organ.
The Bath team’s artificial heart is made out of a range of cutting-edge medical-grade materials, robotics technologies and features including automatic flow rate adjustment to respond just as a real heart does.
Team project manager Fleur Upton said the real-world problem-solving experience is helping the students find solutions to advanced heart failure.
“I gained experience of project managing technical teams while on my placement and Team Bath Heart allows me to apply that in a real-life situation, and in a setting that could make an impact on healthcare and patients in the future,” she added.
“Everyone on the team has the same end goal – to create life-saving technology.”
Team member Francisco Nabais said: “We are lucky to have a lot of really interesting student teams here at Bath. But in our case the fact our work could potentially help seriously ill people is very appealing.”
The team’s academic supervisor, Dr Katharine Fraser, a senior lecturer in Mechanical Engineering said it was inspiring to see the work the team was doing and the approach they were taking.
“My own research is in the field of artificial heart and vascular technologies, and while they have existed for a few years now it’s wonderful to see how the team is approaching the same problems we researchers are investigating.
“Medical engineering and technologies like these have massive industrial potential, so as well as gaining great problem-solving and management experience in entering the competition, the team are also building really relevant skills for their future careers,” she said.
Team Bath Heart hopes to build on the success of other student engineering teams at the university in competition series for motorsports, motorcycle racing, air and marine drone racing, and in rockets.
Fleur added: “There’s a strong history of successful student engineering teams at Bath and we want to make sure the team is sustainable and keeps entering this competition year in, year out.
“We are aiming to build new relationships with sponsors and companies locally and beyond who can help us financially or with in-kind support such as materials, software licences or expertise that we can learn from and apply in our artificial heart.”
