NWO Grants for two Amsterdam UMC researchers to start Demonstrator development

Two Amsterdam UMC researchers have been awarded funding from the NWO Demonstrator programme to manufacture a product or service in the form of a demonstration model. The model serves as a showcase to convince third parties to invest in product development to enable a market introduction of that technology. The two researchers from Amsterdam UMC are Dr. Tom Brouwer, cardiologist in training, and Dr. Annemieke van Dam, assistant professor in forensic research.

Flowsure or automated diuresis monitoring by Dr. Tom Brouwer
Diuresis, the amount of hourly produced urine, is a vital parameter monitored in millions of hospitalized patients each year. Diuresis is monitored using an indwelling catheter inserted into the bladder and provides critical information about the hemodynamic condition of the patient along with parameters such as heart rate and blood pressure.

The current manual monitors are burdensome and often registration is neglected due to time constraints which results in compromised patient safety. Flowsure fully automates diuresis monitoring which has several benefits over the traditional manual monitoring. Flowsure provides real-time continuous monitoring, automates registration in the electronic medical record and provides alerts when urine production falls below a predetermined threshold. Automating diuresis monitoring results in improved patients safety, while reducing nursing workload.

Dr. Tom Brouwer won the Amsterdam Science & Innovation Award in 2021 with Flowsure!

Crime Scene Age InDicator by Dr. Annemieke van Dam
The accurate estimation of the age of biological evidence is essential in forensic investigations, as it can provide crucial information to distinguish between crime-related and unrelated traces, and determine the strength of the evidence. Currently, no methods are available for this purpose. The team of dr. van Dam have developed a novel method that utilizes fluorescence spectroscopy in combination with a stoichiometric aging model to estimate the age of biological traces with high accuracy, onsite, without contamination or destruction of the samples. To bring this method to the market, the team is going to further develop a portable user-friendly fluorimeter prototype.

NWO Demonstrator grant
Demonstrator is one of the valorisation instruments of NWO. A maximum of 160 thousand euros can be applied for per project. The new round is expected to open at the end of November.