Success at the Lord Stafford Awards for FCET graduates, enterprise and research staff

A web-enabled medical device developed with help from Staffordshire University to improve the lives of people living with diabetes has been recognised with a top business award.

Last night (12/11/09)  the insulin injection pen developed by Mark Hanstock in the Electronics Design Centre and the company Mediche, formed by faculty graduates Dan Ellis and Mark Pennington of EXP and Richard Bishop of therichmediacompany together with Pam Cain and Rob Marchant of Marchant-Cain, won the  'Impact through innovation' Lord Stafford awards which is held each year to recognise and encourage greater collaboration between businesses and universities.

The pen monitors the patient's use of the drug insulin by recording information when diabetics take their injections and enables them to control their condition more accurately.  The inspiration for the product came from diabetic restaurateur and chef James Bower who has to take between eight and 10 insulin injections each day and was looking for a way of properly measuring how frequently he was injecting. 

Development engineer Mark Hanstock said: “We were approached in June so we’ve moved fairly quickly on this. We worked with three of our graduates in order to develop the project and this helped with the award as we were able to demonstrate  greater collaboration between the University, it’s former students and outside companies.”

Faculty academic Dr Mohammed Abdul-Maguid and researcher Abdul Hamid Soliman also assisted with the project.

Rob Marchant, Managing Director of MarchantCain said: “Although there is a range of insulin injector pens on the market, none of them has the capability to upload and store the necessary details of date, time and dose of medication. It has massive potential and we strongly believe that once it gets to market, we will have a product on our hands that could have an impact nationally and internationally.”

The winners of the Lord Stafford Awards were announced at a gala dinner held at Gaydon Motor Heritage Museum.   Robert Llewellyn of Scrap Heap Challenge was the after dinner speaker.