On Tuesday 1st March Liverpool Life Sciences UTC hosted the 6th UTC Transmits Seminar – the first in the series for 2017.
Presented at Edge Hill University, our Year 12 students took a trip over to the Ormskirk campus for an hour of talks from three key speakers – all professionals and academics stemming from a range of highly esteemed sectors.
The focus of the programme was all about the future of Health Tech. Arron Gill kicked things off by talking us through the basics of laparoscopic procedures and went on to explore the advances in robotic surgery in the medical industry. Arron continued his his talk by demonstrating the sheer precision of the apparatus used in robotic surgery – a video detailed the robotic surgical system being used (including a camera arm and mechanical arms with surgical instruments attached to them) peel and reattach the skin on a single grape.
The moment that truly gripped the students had to be Arron’s example of one of the world’s first remote surgery operations performed via WiFi. He went on to explain how advances in technology enabled a surgeon based in Boston, America to perform a procedure using a robot surgical system on a patient who was located thousands of miles away in Brussels – fascinating stuff!
Next up, students heard from Liz Ashall-Payne who delivered an engaging and passionate talk all about the creation of her enterprise ORCHA (the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Applications.) Liz explained how the purpose of ORCHA is to offer a service that reviews health apps in order to help both health professionals and members of the public in the UK to more easily and confidently find, compare and benefit from the best health and care apps around.
Our final speaker Lucy Bray rounded off the session by discussing her extensive work in health & childcare. Lucy detailed the way in which her work explores how children and young people can be provided with information in a meaningful and timely way, and how this influences their interactions with health professionals. Her website ‘my child is in pain’ offers parents a wealth of support and advice in providing useful information. Interactive and catered for all types of families, the website explains how common pain medicines work and what parents should know about giving medicines to their children.
We’d like to thank all our guest speakers for sharing their knowledge and providing us with insight into each of their sectors respectively. Overall this UTC Transmits session was an absorbing one, giving all our Year 12 students food for thought. We can’t wait for the next instalment later this year!