Mihir Sheth from Mumbai is one of this year’s Young Innovators Awards winners. From designers turning fish skins into bags to a device that keeps a patient’s muscles working when on a ventilator to avoid muscle wastage, the winners of this year’s Young Innovators’ Awards, announced today by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, look set to tackle some of our biggest societal challenges. This year, half of the winners are women, around a third are Black, Asian or from another ethnic minority group, 17% have identified as disabled.
Mihir Sheth (28 years old), from Oxford, who is of Indian heritage, was inspired by seeing so many patients on ventilators during the pandemic, to co-invent Inspiritus Health, simple to use, non-invasive medical device, which keeps patients’ muscles engaged when they are on a ventilator to prevent muscle wastage.
Hailing from Mumbai, he finished his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Electrical Engineering and got a job in the USA at a company that was developing medical devices with and for clinicians in emerging markets. Mihir was offered a position as a Global Insight Fellow at the University of Oxford.
Speaking exclusively to Asian Voice, Mihir said, “I moved to the UK to use Needs-Led Innovation to develop a novel medical device. Along with my co-founder, Dr. Myra Malik, we spent over a month embedded in hospitals in Senegal and in the UK where we were struck by the fact that patients on the ventilator seemed to be getting weaker and weaker.”
Ventilation is a topic that’s close to Mihir, because when he was 10 years old, his mother was admitted into the hospital and spent 40 days on the ventilator. “I do remember seeing her in the bed in the ICU and only being able to see her during visiting hours. This personally motivates me to develop a technology that can get ventilated patients home to their loved ones quicker,” Mihir said.
Explaining the innovation he has created, Mihir told us, “Patients can lose up to 6% of their respiratory muscle strength per day of ventilation, and often spend up to half their total time on ventilation in the process of weaning - restrengthening their breathing muscles in order to breathe independently again.”
Inspiritus Health has developed a simple, easy-to-use, non-invasive medical device that keeps the breathing muscles engaged from day 1 of ventilation. This simple device is a wearable that is placed on the patient and works in tune with the ventilator to keep the muscles engaged and prevents the weakness from occurring in the first place.
Through this technology, Mihir and his team aim to reduce the patient muscle weakness that occurs due to ventilation, thus reducing the amount of time patients spend on the ventilator. This could also result in patients being discharged from the hospital quicker, with fewer complications and with a better quality of life.
The Innovate UK Young Innovator Award has also provided Mihir with a network of very inspirational entrepreneurs.
The grant money provided and the mentorship provided by Innovate UK, The Prince’s Trust and KTN is critical in helping build a strong foundation to the company and to build and test more prototypes of the device. It is helping him learn how to navigate setting up a new business, and the advice provided by my business mentor has helped save me from some pitfalls.
Mihir’s initial next steps are to develop new versions of the prototypes and get feedback from healthcare professionals and patients on the aesthetics. “I have been in touch with healthcare professionals in Manchester, Oxford and London and I look forward to continuing developing those partnerships in order to ensure that the innovation can impact the maximum number of lives,” he told the newsweekly.
Mihir has spent a lot of time in understanding the root cause of the problem of muscle weakness due to ventilation – through reading research papers, talking to healthcare practitioners, and by doctors and nurses as they treat patients. This has enabled him to get a better understanding of their workflow and thought processes, and the context that the solution will have to exist in.
If you’re an inspiring young innovator, check out how Innovate UK could support you here: https://ktn-uk.org/programme/young-innovators/
