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Distinguished Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Professor J. Geoffrey Chase received his B.S. from Case Western Reserve University in 1986 in Mechanical Engineering. His M.S. and PhD were obtained at Stanford University in 1991 and 1996 in the departments of Mechanical and Civil Engineering, respectively. He spent 6 years working for General Motors between various degrees and a further 5 years consulting and doing research in Silicon Valley, including positions at Xerox PARC, GN ReSound, Hughes Space and Communications and Infineon Technologies AG, before taking his current position at the University of Canterbury in 2000.
His fundamental research area is at the intersection of engineering, clinical medicine and physiology, called model-based therapeutics. Specific interests include: control systems, physiological systems dynamics, and dynamic and systems modeling. These areas have been primarily applied in his research to biomedical and clinical medical systems and devices focusing on creating efficient delivery and optimized, patient-specific health care delivery. Clinically, his primary focus areas are intensive and acute care medicine. More broadly his work also involves and the broader areas of cardiovascular disease and metabolic systems in diabetes.
Selected specific accomplishments include the development of two startup companies focusing on novel breast cancer screening technologies, and model-based therapeutics in critical care. His research students have won 3 NZ Young Scientist of the Year awards in the last 7 years. He also led the development of SPRINT, a glycemic control protocol that reduced mortality 25-40% at a cost savings of $1050 per patient treated in the Christchurch ICU. SPRINT and its developers went on to win the 2006 IPENZ Design Award, and the 2006 NZ Health Innovation Supreme Award.
His work has also resulted in two venture funded startup companies in bio-engineering, and medical systems and devices. These include one on commercializing model-based solutions in critical care for better care and reduced cost. The second is for the novel, non-invasive DIET breast cancer screening device. Both have systems progressed to clinical trials.
Dr. Chase has published over 1000 refereed journal and conference papers in these areas over the last 15 years, and is an inventor on 12 US and European patents with several in process. He is on the editorial board of four journals in Bio-Engineering and Clinical Medicine, and is the chair of the International Federation on Automatic Control (IFAC) Technical Committee (IFAC TC 8.2) on Modeling and Control in Biological and Medical Systems. He was elected to a Fellowship in the Royal Society of New Zealand (FRSNZ), the NZ Academy of Science, in 2010 one of only 10-20 engineers to have received that honor, and is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (FASME) and of the NZ Institute of Professional Engineers (FIPENZ).
Teaching old electronics, new tricks: medical applications of well-known industrial electronics
Industrial electronics can often be viewed as just that, “industrial”, where the applications are well-known and understood, and the elements that make them up, such as digital vision, sensors, and automation, are even more well-understood. We thus expect to see these things in those industrial settings, and, these days, in a wide range of consumer uses for smart devices and systems. However, medicine is an area that one would still expect to see significant use of these well-known elements. Somehow, medicine is seen as requiring special electronics, sensors and systems.
This talk considers how well-known – there is nothing new here! – industrial electronics and fundamental computing are revolutionising some areas of medicine with significant clinical impact. The presentation covers three application areas that highlight different aspects. The use of tablet computers and computation are used to control blood sugar levels of intensive care patients around the world, including a cloud interface for easy access to data and quality control auditing. Next, the use of ultrasonic sensors is being developed to create wearable diagnostics that can audit and diagnose impending hip implant failures, far enough before they occur to save cost on revision surgery. Finally, digital cameras, strobe lights and simple actuation are used in a novel breast cancer screening concept in clinical trials to create an all new way of screening patients that is 5x faster and costs 10x less.
These applications range from using industrial electronics to do the same care better to all new medical applications and devices. Each uses simple off the shelf components and systems/software, which, to repeat, means that there is nothing new here. Nothing, except the novel, more efficient healthcare they enable!