Medical emergencies are not usually a game, but that could be just what the doctor ordered.

Researchers at Oxford University have developed a computer game-style system to train health workers for emergencies.

In countries like Kenya, where women give birth and children fall ill hundreds of miles from the nearest clinic, it’s vital the best first aid is given in the right order.

And since humans learn better through games or challenges than lessons, scientists came up with the Health Emergency Learning Platform app, or HELP

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It can be downloaded to a mobile phone and takes the player through a series of challenges where they must give the right answer, before being allowed to move on to the next level.

If they play often enough the decisions become embedded, so they automatically follow the right steps in the right order when faced with a real emergency.

Oxford University’s Professor Mike English, who led the team that developed HELP, said: “Face-to-face emergency or resuscitation training is time-consuming and expensive.

“With a game, people will spend hours working out how to get to the next level.”

This was just one of many medical breakthroughs demonstrated at Oxford Med-Tech last week.

Held at Oxford University’s department of pathology in South Parks Road, the exhibition of locally invented medical and software technology gives a glimpse into what the NHS will be using in the next five years.

Also on show was brain-mapping software, which compares thousands of MRI scan images. It allows neuroscientists to measure how tiny areas of the brain are changing and could provide vital clues into conditions such as autism and Alzheimer’s.

Eugene Duff, part of an Oxford University research team led by Professor Stephen Smith, said: “We have to make millions of tracks through the brain to see what it looks like.

“The amount of information analysed for just one brain is equal to 10 movies and that all has to be condensed down to one single image.”

Isis Innovation, which helps scientists to spin-out companies, says investment is vital to scale-up inventions and research so it can benefit everyone.

Dr Fred Kemp, of Isis, said: “MedTech is a showcase of all the great technology coming out of Oxford in medical engineering and digital health.

“A lot of big commercial companies treat this event as a shop window.”

Professor Fritz Vollrath, known as Spiderman and based at Oxford University’s department of zoology, has been studying how spiders and silk worms weave and control silk and webs.

A synthetic material which mimics spider silk can be used to make knee replacements and could revolutionise the way doctors ‘repair’ human joints and nerves.

He said “We still have many lessons to learn from spiders and the way they weave their webs.

“Silk is biodegradable and biocompatible, so human tissue will accept and grow on it, giving it regenerative properties.

“Medics are realising it is not just about fixing, it is about getting the body to the point where it can fix itself.”

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