Press

A consortium led by Onzo has embarked upon a £2.3m project to use smart metering technology to develop future applications and services, using telehealth as an example application.

With governments globally setting targets for the roll-out of smart meters, this project will examine the potential applications for the new communication infrastructure that will be created by the emergence of the smart grid.

In the healthcare sector, the technology is expected to decrease the need for patients to visit their clinician or hospital for regular check ups by providing a secure and wireless method of sending information on health issues such as a person’s weight and blood pressure to their healthcare professional.

Not only could this improve the quality of healthcare provision, but it could mean that both patients and healthcare professionals will be able to avoid the cost and inconvenience of hospital or house visits.

In what was a highly competitive pitch, £1.15m (50%) funding for Project Hydra has been awarded by the Technology Strategy Board and the Engineering and UK Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC), with a further investment of £1.15m from the consortium partners.

Onzo is developing the technology alongside eight other partners. The consortium is made up of Onzo, Atmel, Brunel University, Chorleywood Health Centre, Echelon Corporation, Innova Partnerships, Philips Applied Technologies, Scottish and Southern Energy and Silver Spring Networks.

Neil Tierney, Research and Development Director at Onzo, said: “By developing a technology that is effective, secure, simple to use and allows interoperability between devices, Project Hydra opens up opportunities for more than just the healthcare sector. End-to-end connectivity can bring value added services to energy, water, home automation, security and sectors we haven’t even thought of yet.”

Dr Russell Jones, lead clinician at Chorleywood Health Centre, said: “With aging populations and the number of people with long term health needs increasing, the pressure on global healthcare systems is immense. It is becoming harder to deliver the services people need and current telecare developments are small scale and fragmented.

“Project Hydra extends the vision of smart metering, leveraging a cost effective and secure infrastructure to deliver an end-to-end solution that will suit both the patients and healthcare professionals.”

For more information on Project Hydra, please visit: www.projecthydra.info

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NOTES TO EDITORS

The Technology Strategy Board

The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led executive non-departmental public body, established by the government. Its role is to promote and support research into, and development and exploitation of, technology and innovation for the benefit of UK business, in order to increase economic growth and improve the quality of life. It is sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). For further information please visit www.innovateuk.org.

2) The Project Hydra members are:
Onzo
Onzo provides utility companies with customer intelligence solutions. Those solutions enable utilities to achieve their business objectives and meet regulatory requirements: attracting and retaining customers, shifting usage off peak, improving energy efficiency, improving customer satisfaction, reducing the cost to serve, and increasing non-core revenue. Onzo’s solutions include hardware and software that can increase the amount of valuable data that is gathered, process data to maximise its value to the utility, and increase the number and effectiveness of the utility’s consumer touchpoints. For further information please visit www.onzo.com.


Atmel
Atmel Corporation (www.atmel.com) is a global leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, and complementary products such as capacitive touch sensing ICs, ASICs, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with complete microcontroller based system solutions focused on consumer, industrial, automotive, security, communications computing markets


Brunel University
Brunel is a world class University based in Uxbridge, West London, with a mission to combine academic rigour with a practical, entrepreneurial and imaginative approach. Within the Department of Information Systems and Computing, the Bright group conducts research on aspects of health technology and telemedicine including; technology development, medical device standards, clinical and cost benefits, and user perceptions.


Chorleywood Health Centre
The Chorleywood Health Centre has been serving the community in Chorleywood and its surrounding villages in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire since 1920. The purpose-built surgery was opened in 1997 and provides comprehensive general medical services including treatment and prevention of illness, health promotion, and screening services. The practice provides both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education and nurse education. It is a Royal College of General Practice designated research practice and has long standing research partnerships with Brunel University and Oxford University. Present work is on the evaluation of the remote patient monitoring of patients with chronic diseases, the value of digital diagnostics in general practice, and the impact of tele-consultation on the patient pathway.


Echelon Corporation
Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ: ELON) is leading the worldwide transformation of the electricity grid into a smart, communicating energy network, connecting utilities to their customers, enabling networking of everyday devices, and providing customers with energy aware homes and businesses that react to conditions on the grid.

Echelon's NES System – the backbone for the smart grid – is used by utilities to replace existing stand-alone electricity meters with a network infrastructure that is open, inexpensive, reliable, and proven. The NES System helps utilities compete more effectively, reduce operating costs, provide expanded services and help energy users manage and reduce overall energy use. Echelon's LonWorks® Infrastructure products extend the smart grid, powering tens of millions of energy aware, everyday devices made by thousands of companies – connecting them to each other, to the electricity grid and to the Internet. LonWorks based products work together to monitor and save energy; lower costs; improve productivity; and enhance service, quality, safety, and convenience in utility, municipal, building, industrial, transportation, and home area networks. More information about Echelon can be found at www.echelon.com


Innova Partnerships
Innova Partnerships is an early stage Life Science investment and partnering company that currently has five portfolio companies and a network of Associates. Innova Partnerships, based in Scotland, commenced operations in November 2006 and has intellectual property in providing remote healthcare management on the smart metering infrastructure. Through it’s portfolio company, Healthaware Ltd, it is delivering healthcare products for smart metering systems targeted at the aging population. For further information see http://www.innovapartnerships.com


About Royal Philips Electronics
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is a diversified health and well-being company, focused on improving people’s lives through timely innovations. As a world leader in healthcare, lifestyle and lighting, Philips integrates technologies and design into people-centric solutions, based on fundamental customer insights and the brand promise of “sense and simplicity”. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips employs more than 116,000 employees in more than 60 countries worldwide. With sales of EUR 23 billion in 2009, the company is a market leader in cardiac care, acute care and home healthcare, energy efficient lighting solutions and new lighting applications, as well as lifestyle products for personal well-being and pleasure with strong leadership positions in flat TV, male shaving and grooming, portable entertainment and oral healthcare. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter.


Scottish and Southern Energy
SSE is one of the UK’s leading energy companies, involved in the generation, distribution and supply of electricity and in the storage, distribution and supply of gas. It supplies energy to over nine million customers throughout the country, is independently-recognised as the best energy supplier for customer service and is the UK’s leading generator of electricity from renewable sources.


About Silver Spring Networks
Silver Spring Networks is a leading Smart Grid solution provider that enables utilities to achieve operational efficiencies, reduce carbon emissions and empower their customers with new ways to monitor and manage their energy consumption. Silver Spring provides the hardware, software and services that allow utilities to deploy and run multiple advanced applications, including Smart Metering, Demand Response, Distribution Automation and Distributed Generation, over a unified network.

Silver Spring’s Smart Energy Platform is based on open, Internet Protocol (IP) standards, allowing continuous, two-way communication between the utility and every device on the grid. Silver Spring has numerous deployments with leading utilities in the US and abroad, including Florida Power & Light, Pacific Gas & Electric, Pepco Holdings, Inc., Jemena Electricity Networks Limited and United Energy Distribution, among others. For additional information, please visit www.silverspringnetworks.com