STAFF are being hired at an Oxford biotech firm to develop technology to medically assess people using mobile phone cameras.

Oxehealth, based at Oxford Science Park, is to hire five to six people to take staff numbers to about 15 by next year.

Its core business is developing algorithms for software that converts images from cameras into measurements for medical vital signs.

It already has technology for reading heart and breathing rate and is working on blood oxygenation, body temperature and pulse transit time, a proxy for blood pressure.

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Chief executive Jonathan Chevallier said: “We’re looking for people who are skilled in things like computer vision and 3D signal processing.”

The firm is banking on a world where “cameras are going to be everywhere” he said.

Heat beat, for example, can be measured by a microscopic analysis of skin colour changing to red as blood flows through it, he said.

Breathing rate can be monitored by minute movements in the chest and face and body temperature is indicated by infra-red thermal imaging.

Among its uses is the passive monitoring of elderly people at home and patients in hospital wards, he said.

And he said the diagnostic tools could also be used in non-medical environments, such as checking the tiredness or health of lorry drivers.

It is looking “to expand the footprint of our technology” and to engage the company’s partners, he said.

Oxehealth “fine-tunes” its technology in response to how its partners want to utilise it, he said.

Although Mr Chevallier said he could not disclose the identity of Oxehealth’s partners, due to non-disclosure agreements, he did say: “They are major players in the sorts of fields I talked about.”

Oxehealth spun out of Oxford University’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering in 2012, where it was started in conjunction with the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the county’s major hospitals, including the John Radcliffe in Oxford.

The company raised £2.7m in two rounds of investment in April last year and this April. Its major shareholders are IP Group and Ora Capital.

Mr Chevallier said thatOxehealth was still in the “pre-revenue” phase of development.

 

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