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| Hong Kong innovations win international recognition ( 01/02/2005 ) | |||||||||
Hong Kong Polytechnic University has won seven top awards at an international innovation exhibition in Europe.
The university's optometry department won two awards for a hi tech invention designed to help health professionals in poor countries make quick and inexpensive assessments of eye problems at Brussels Eureka 2004, also known as the 53rd World Exhibition of Innovation, Research and New Technology.
The Instant Vision Assessment Device spectacles won a gold award in the medical category. Team leader Professor George Woo, associate dean of the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, said the innovative device was inspired by the World Health Organisation's Vision 2020 initiative to eliminate avoidable blindness by 2020.
Patients simply need to put on the spectacles and look at an object 6 metres away, turn the knob to focus the lens and eyesight abnormality reading can be obtained.
Inventive streak helps Hong Kong excel
"This low cost device is best suited for developing countries where people could barely afford the sophisticated and expensive equipment for optometry testing. It is so simple to use that it does not even require well-trained personnel to operate the device," said Professor Woo. This invention can help save and correct vision of millions of people around the world, he added.
The Silver Award went to another of the university's innovations - shape memory fabrics and their preparation methods. According to the research team headed by Dr Hu Jinlian, scientists at PolyU's Institute of Textile and Clothing have invented the world's first cellulose-made shape memory fabric which allows the fabrics to readily recover their original shapes.
Carry bags with anti-bacterial and back-protecting functions took the Bronze awards. A novel Tissue Ultrasound Palpation System (TUPS), an objective stiffness tester, also won an award. The probe uses compound ultrasound and load sensor to measure tissue thickness and stiffness within seconds instead of commonly used hand-feel technique and could be used in medical fields as well as food, material and cosmetic industries.
It is the second time that PolyU participated in Brussels Eureka. Its debut in 2001 also scored a hit winning the gold medal for the Mars Rock Corer, a device subsequently deployed by the European Space Agency in its 2003 Mars Express Mission.
Related links Hong Kong Polytechnic University | |||||||||
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