TU/e will receive five million euros from the Eindhoven University Fund. This donation flows from the estate of the Fred and Thea Philips Foundation. Its purpose: is to conduct research into medical devices.
It is the largest ever donation received since the university opened in 1956. “It is a fantastic donation that will help us to enable many years of groundbreaking research in the field of health,” said Henk Kivits, chairman of the Eindhoven University Fund. Shortly, this will make it possible to finance research on the proper monitoring of premature babies.
Mat for babies
Together with the Máxima Medical Center, the TU/e has developed a ‘smart’ mat. That mat could signal potential threats to a baby without him/her noticing. For example, the mat could display movement, breathing, and, in the future, heartbeat.
“Some babies are born at 24 weeks, weigh only 500 grams, and have severely underdeveloped organs,” says Carola van Pul, clinical physicist at MMC. According to her, it’s a great benefit because it allows infants to experience much less stress.
Van Pul claims that there are gains to be made in monitoring movements. “If a baby is sick, it will move less. The sensor mat registers this, so doctors can act quickly. We want to investigate whether we can recognize patterns in this.”
Foundation
The fortune of the Philips couple Fred and Thea has no connection to Frits Philips’ light bulb empire. Fred had a thriving party supplies store in Amsterdam. Later he made a lot of returns on investments. Then he and his wife decided to donate their money to medical research after Thea struggled with health problems.
Source: Studio040
Translation: Chaitali Sengupta
