UK and China team up for medical science

'Biologically-inspired robots' and 'high-intensity ultrasound' might sound like inventions out of a sci-fi, rather than something you'd find at your local hospital. 

But these devices were two of the projects highlighted by researchers who spoke at the ‘One Belt One Road Summit' in Oxford on Thursday.

A robot is operating a patient at the Fujian Medical University Union Hospital. [Photo: Chinanews.com]

Surgical robots were one of the inventions featured in the discussions on science. Already in use in hospitals around the world, these systems allow surgeons to use VR screens and haptic devices to move high precision robot hands.

"Using a robot like this gives surgeons more space to work, which allows for greater accuracy in difficult operations,” explained Jindong Liu, a Research Fellow at the Hamlyn Centre, a healthcare technology research centre at Imperial College London.

Dr Liu highlighted the importance of Chinese collaboration in this research. “In the UK, the small patient pool means it takes longer for these devices to be tested out," he explained. “Through working directly with hospitals in China, we can trial these devices further and get them to a point where they're ready for use and can be made available more widely.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Hamlyn Centre in 2015 and during his visit, UCF, a major Chinese financial services group, announced that it would donate US$4.1m to support research there along with Imperial’s Data Science Institute.

Another invention discussed was high-intensity focused ultrasound, or HIFU, which researchers have been trialling as a non-invasive method of treating harmful tumours.

Ultrasound waves are used for medical scans because they can transmit harmlessly through living tissue.

As David Cranston, Clinical Director of the HIFU unit at the University of Oxford explained, when these same ultrasound beams are focused, they can be used to 'cook' tumours, without causing damage to the tissue surrounding them.

Oxford University acquired the first Chinese HIFU machine in the western hemisphere, which was developed by researchers in Chongqing. Since 2002, they've been using it to treat illnesses such as prostate cancer, liver and kidney tumours.