Editorial Comment Portable lung breathes life into hi-tech Wales

Scientists studying the incredibly small, building new materials and machines atom by atom - it sounded like the stuff of Star Trek.

But a new project led by Professor Rhodri Williams and backed by nanotech science is likely to produce results, not pipe dreams, in an area where it matters most - our overburdened, underfunded health service.

A new 'portable lung' scientists on the seafront campus are working on could be in our wards within 10 years, saving thousands of lives and millions of pounds. The lightweight machine will be essential in fighting acute respiratory infection (ARI).

Every winter thousands of elderly patients are taken into already crowded, expensive-to-run intensive care units suffering the effects of ARI. The results are vast expense, and hundreds of delayed operations, a major stumbling block to the smooth running of our hospitals.

While what some are calling the 'plastic lung' takes over the functions of the patients' lungs they can recover from life-threatening infections so the prognosis for ARI patients is better too.

Nanotechnology experts are currently fine-tuning the portable lung.

Blood has a tendency to form dangerous clots when in contact with artificial surfaces but the nanomedicine teams at Swansea are hard at work developing new materials to ensure the portable lung provides a vital new weapon in the doctors' armoury.

The new invention could also be used to help frontline troops suffering the effects of chemical weapons. The portable lung project is not only justification for the millions of pounds poured into futuristic nanotechnology it also serves to highlight the worth of the army of new technium centres springing up across Wales.

One of the partners in the portable lung project, along with Swansea NHS Trust, is specialist blood treatment firm Haemair Ltd based at the Digital Technium Centre on Swansea University's campus.

It is another telling example of how technium centres are starting to turn good ideas into workable, saleable and above all practical inventions that improve people's lives and at the same time enrich Wales' economy.

In a land where coal, steel and metal production once ruled, a subtler, better looking, hi-tech, knowledge economy is starting to emerge from the shadows of the steel mills and the pithead wheels.

Source:TMC-News