A new lease of life

Home to more MedTech companies than any other UK region. Home to one of the largest hospitals in Europe. The West Midlands sits at the forefront of medical advancement.

 

X-ray vision

By pioneering the use of X-ray imaging, Birmingham’s John Hall-Edwards kickstarted a whole new field of medical science. He was also the first medical professional to use radiation during a surgical operation and took the first ever X-ray image of a human spine.

Today, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham was the first hospital outside London to use the radiotherapy machine CyberKnife, which uses robots to target radiation on hard-to-reach tumours. It delivers a beam with 0.1mm precision.

World authority on epilepsy

Professor Graham Harding of Aston University was the first person to find a link between flashes of light on television programmes or video games and epilepsy during the 1990s.  Dr Harding published more than 150 research papers on photosensitive epilepsy. In 1993, he helped the British regulatory agency for television to draft guidelines on how to prevent triggering seizures in epilepsy sufferers.

Pioneering pacemaker research

The pacemaker has transformed the lives of patients with heart rate conditions around the world. The technology as we know it today is the result of landmark research by heart surgeon Leon Abrams and electronic engineer Ray Lightwood, both alumni of the University of Birmingham.

Today, the university is leading the way in life sciences with its research into liver transplantation and revolutionary tools in the fight against infection.

World’s first Ibuprofen patch

University of Warwick and Coventry-based company Medherant has produced and patented the world’s first ibuprofen patch, delivering the drug directly through skin to exactly where it is needed at a consistent dose rate. This paves the way for the development of a range of long-acting, over-the-counter pain relief products, without the need to take potentially damaging doses of the drug orally.

Revolutionary brain cancer treatment

The world’s leading brain cancer drug temozolomide was created by Professor Malcolm Stevens and his team at Aston University in 1987. In combination with radiotherapy, temozolomide has become the international standard-of-care for thousands of people with this type of cancer.

Devoted Dora

Dorothy Wyndlow Pattison – better known as Sister Dora – was famed for her nursing and medical skills at her Walsall cottage hospital in the 1860s. Her unrelenting devotion to the welfare of her patients, mirrored by staff across NHS wards today, ensured the death rate among victims in the industrial Black Country remained lower than at London's teaching hospitals.

Ground-breaking treatment for heart conditions

Dr Helen Maddock of Coventry University has developed a new way to test the effect of drugs on the heart without using human or animal trials. The expert in cardiovascular physiology and pharmacology formed the spin-out company InoCardia Ltd to implement the ground-breaking method.

Dr Maddock’s technique, which uses real human heart tissue for all tests, has the potential to shave years off the development of successful drugs for a range of treatments. 

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