Wireless healthcare wins a prize

. Professor Toumazou, who holds the Winston Wong Chair in Biomedical Circuits at Imperial College hold 23 patents and has invented electronic devices ranging from dual-mode cellular phones to ultra-low power devices for medical diagnosis and therapy. Current research includes the development of an artificial retina and pancreas in silicon using nanowatts of power but his core technology is Advanced Mixed Signal Processing (AMxT) which forms the basis for the ultra-low power wireless chip-scale body monitoring for healthcare and lifestyle applications which was the subject of the Eureka article. As well as being brought to market by Imperial spin-out company, Toumaz Technology, the technology is also being commercialised by another spin-out company founded by Professor Toumazou, Taiwan-based Future Waves, which specialises in semiconductor components for next-generation digital communications and broadcast technologies. Nominating Fellow Sir Eric Ash said, "There are people who are good at science and there are others who are good at creating companies. Chris Toumazou is one of that very rare breed who are bilingual - excellent in both spheres." Professor Toumazou added: "I am delighted to receive the Royal Academy's Silver Medal. Interdisciplinary and translational research is all about mixing the ingredients to create novel and disruptive platform technologies. It is so exciting to see this mixture of ingredients gel in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering."