Cutting-edge research benefits the population, from the hospital to the gas station
From the gas station you frequent to the hospital in your city, technologies that were born at Unicamp are present in your daily life without you realizing it. This arrival on the market is the process known as technology transfer. The body responsible for this activity at Unicamp is the Innovation Agency, which mediates the institution's contact with the business sector.
“We are in first place in the number of patents filed in Brazil. In recent years, we have always been in the top 10. I believe that one of the reasons for this is not related to the option of doing applied research, but rather because at Unicamp we do cutting-edge research. Innovation happens at borders, when we think outside the box”, explains Newton Frateschi, director of Inova Unicamp. “In this scenario, the Innovation Agency has a fundamental role in identifying this cutting-edge research and giving confidence to the researcher to transform it into intellectual property,” he says.
Discover below examples of technologies that were born in the academic field and reached you.
Software for hospitals
How much does a hospital spend annually on maintaining medical equipment? Which machines consume the most resources? How to size maintenance teams? How long is certain equipment unavailable for use? What is the most used part for maintenance? The acquisition and maintenance of medical and hospital equipment (EMH) has a significant impact on the budget of healthcare establishments (EAS). Good management of this heritage depends on quick and objective answers to the questions above. This is exactly what the GETS software does: Technology Management for Health, developed at the Center for Biomedical Engineering (CEB), at Unicamp.
GETS makes it possible to generate a standardized inventory of dental-hospital equipment. With it, hospitals and healthcare institutions in general can manage each piece of equipment more efficiently, from its acquisition, maintenance, to replacement, when applicable. “GETS allows you to learn more about the health of healthcare equipment, generating a diagnosis of the functional status of hospital medical equipment installed in public health care establishments”, says José Wilson Bassani, CEB coordinator.
Since 2013, GETS has been used by the Hospital Universitário Antônio Pedro (HUAP), linked to the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF). “The adoption of technology here at HUAP made it possible to fully manage the institution’s medical and hospital equipment fleet”, says Yasser Issmail, head of the institution’s Clinical Engineering Sector. He lists several benefits of the software: greater control of the equipment fleet; gains in productivity, since, through more efficient control of equipment, it is possible to direct actions more precisely to solve problems; and increased quality of service and asset availability through more efficient scheduling of preventive maintenance. “Just as important as what I mentioned above is stock control and consultation on the life history of the equipment. Based on the data recorded in GETS, it is possible to prepare management reports with various indicators, informing applied labor, equipment availability time during a given period, among others”, explains Issmail.
The implementation of GETS requires the signing of a cooperation agreement between the public health institution and Unicamp, which establishes a license agreement to use the software at no cost to EAS. “Installation of the software is quite quick, from one to three weeks. The first activity is the creation of the inventory with data provided by the local team under the supervision of the CEB”, explains Bassani. The Sumaré State Hospital (HES-Unicamp), which also adopted the technology, is finalizing the inventory phase. “We interact with all the hospitals where GETS was installed and with institutions that are interested in acquiring the technology. We already have a waiting list,” he says.
GETS has already generated a database with around 20 thousand pieces of equipment. The forecast, according to Bassani, is that this number will reach 150 thousand by the end of the year. This database uses standardized nomenclature for EMHs and actions related to them: corrective and preventive maintenance, installations, actions on contracts, etc. “Internally, the team that starts using GETS learns a lot about what it does and what it should do, looking at quantitative data and indicators. In this sense, structural and organized information is a very powerful tool in the area of clinical engineering”, says Bassani.
He also points out the potential of GETS for research and teaching. “The entire maintenance history and useful life of the equipment is stored in a retrievable and standardized way. Several theses were generated during the conception of GETS and there is ongoing research in several areas. There are researchers interested in exploring the mathematical and computational point of view of technology, the social aspect, considering the savings that can be generated in the public health system, the managerial aspect, for the control of maintenance teams and clinical engineering, cost management, etc.”
Decision Tool
One of the main benefits of GETS is to generate performance indicators for the maintenance of medical equipment. According to Bassani, the proper functioning of equipment can be the result of several factors, such as training, qualification level of the maintenance team and the time the equipment has been used. “Of course, the quality of the equipment weighs heavily and this is of interest to manufacturers and suppliers. If a certain piece of equipment fails across the entire network – and this is one of the pieces of information that GETS can generate – this could be an indicator that it is, in fact, not good. Hence the interest of supplier companies or manufacturers in knowing how their equipment performs in hospitals as a whole. There are technologies that, with small adjustments, can serve you better,” he explains. In this context, GETS becomes a strategic tool for data mining (data mining).
From university to gas stations
Another product created at Unicamp that allows the quality of a product to be assessed is Xerloq, which monitors the quality of automotive fuels by determining the alcohol content of hydrated ethyl alcohol fuel (AEHC) and the content of anhydrous ethyl alcohol fuel (AEAC) in gasoline . The technology was developed during doctoral research at the Institute of Chemistry and reached the market through licensing carried out by Tech Chrom, a company that began its activities at the Technological Base Incubator (Incamp) and which operates in the development and application of analytical methods and apparatus. “We know about this research because Ismael Pereira Chagas, one of the authors of the research, came to work at Tech Chrom. When we saw the potential of the technology, we decided to look for financing to transform it into a product”, says Valter Matos, one of the company's founders.
The National Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels Agency (ANP) establishes that gasoline sold at gas stations can have between 18% and 27% anhydrous alcohol in its formulation. Hydrated ethanol, used as fuel, can have a water percentage between 6,2% and 7,5%. To make sure that these limits have been respected and that they are selling quality fuel, gas stations are advised to test the fuel that arrives from distributors. “This test, however, uses a significant amount of fuel, is time-consuming and is subject to failure if the station professional is not properly trained to carry it out”, warns Matos.
Xerloq allows you to control fuel quality. Simple to operate, it requires just 1ml of fuel placed in a glass cuvette that is introduced into an analysis cavity of the device. The reading takes seven seconds, showing whether or not the fuel has been tampered with. In 2014, the company won the ANP Technological Innovation Award, in the micro, small or medium supplier category, in collaboration with an oil company.
The equipment has already been on the market for six years. “Xerloq is being used in around 300 gas stations across Brazil. Among our customers there are also distributors, plants, industries, city halls and even aerial spraying companies that use planes powered by ethanol”, reveals Matos.
The Phoenix chain adopted the Tech Chrom photometer at the seven gas stations it manages in several cities in the State of São Paulo. For Renato Pelegrinetti, owner of the network, one of the biggest advantages is the ease of taking the test. “We adopted the equipment around four years ago and there have been cases in which we returned fuel to the distributor because the photometer indicated tampering. As the test is quick and easy, we are able to test all the shipments that arrive without compromising the station’s routine”, says Pelegrinetti. According to him, Xerloq protects the station in relation to supposed irregularities and also provides security for customers who are sure they are purchasing quality fuel.
Men's Health
A product created at Unicamp that is about to enter the market is the urethral connector for urodynamic assessment. Developed through a partnership between CEB and the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FCM), the device was licensed by Dynamed, a manufacturer of medical equipment, which will launch the new product in September, at the São Paulo Urology Congress. The urodynamic study is an exam used to evaluate the dynamics of storage, transport and emptying of the bladder. In the case of men, it is indicated to investigate problems such as prostate enlargement and urinary incontinence, for example. “The method used today requires the introduction of a probe into the patient's urethral canal, which can be painful and also pose a risk of infection”, explains Manoel Soares, partner at Dynamed.
To find a solution, professor Carlos Arturo Levi D'Ancona, from FCM, had the collaboration of professor José Wilson Magalhães Bassani, from the Center for Biometic Engineering. “We looked for something that was simpler, faster and non-invasive and, based on the research, we arrived at the urethral connector”, reveals D'Ancona. The new device is made of PVC and Teflon and has the shape of a hollow cone from which a connector comes out that is in contact with the patient's urethra. It eliminates the need for a probe and allows the exam to be completed in just five minutes. The tests were carried out at the Hospital de Clínicas (HC) at Unicamp. “The big advantage is being able to repeat the exam several times throughout the treatment, without causing discomfort to the patient. This will allow the doctor to monitor the evolution of the condition and intervene whenever necessary”, adds D'Ancona. The low cost of the device should also help in this regard. “It was a rich experience, which included expertise from various areas and the partnership of a company that will take our research to the market more quickly. As a doctor, it is gratifying to contribute to this result”, says D'Ancona.
Dynamed licensed this technology in 2016 and helped build the prototype. According to Soares, Unicamp's Partnerships area was important in helping to prepare the terms of the partnership at all stages, even before the licensing itself. “Dynamed is a national company that proved to be very innovative when establishing this partnership with Unicamp. It was an agreement that generated benefits for the University and society in the long term”, celebrates Iara Ferreira, director of Partnerships at Inova Unicamp.
International market
In addition to the national market, the company hopes to sell the connector outside Brazil. Dynamed participates in an initiative by the Brazilian Association of the Medical, Dental, Hospital and Laboratory Articles and Equipment Industry (Abimo), together with the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil). This is the project Brazilian Health Devices, which aims to promote exports of Brazilian medical and hospital articles and equipment industries outside Brazil. “We participate in fairs, international missions and business rounds outside Brazil and we intend to present the new product on these occasions. We are quite optimistic due to the advantages of the device in relation to the conventional evaluation method”, he concluded.
