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A wireless heart pump - Source: ONE News -
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Auckland University scientists have developed the technology to power a wireless heart pump that could save the lives of thousands of heart patients and eventually offer an alternative to heart transplants.
The wireless heart pump uses magnetic fields to transfer power through a person's skin rather than using wire cables. The pump can be powered this way 24 hours a day for a person's lifetime.
The new technology came out of collaboration between scientists from Auckland University's Bioengineering Institute, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Department of Physiology.
A new company, TETCor, was created to take the technology for powering a wide range of devices implanted in the human body to market.
TETCor CEO Dr Simon Malpas says heart pumps need a huge amount of power.
The only way to power current artificial heart pumps is through a wire cable that goes through a patient's stomach and chest.
He says these wires cause serious infections, sometimes leading to death, in about 40% of patients. The wires are also prone to breaking and restrict a patient's activities.
The new wireless heart pump uses a coil outside a person's body to generate a magnetic field. A second coil placed inside a person's body, near the collar bone, picks up the signal from this field and creates power for the pump.
Malpas says previous attempts at making wireless heart pumps produced too much heat and would have ended up "cooking a person from the inside."
He says the secret of this new technology is to deliver exactly the right amount of power, thereby eliminating the heating problem.
TETCor has just licensed the technology for the wireless heart pump to the US medical company MicroMed.
The two companies will work together to combine the power transfer technology with the pump technology, and plan to begin patient trials within 24 months.
