Sean won the Gallium Zone in March 2012. Where has he been spending his £500?

We have been making some progress with our plans to create an interactive iBook to educate school children about regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. With the emerging importance of the field we believe that an early introduction to tissue engineering and regenerative medicine will stimulate the interest of school children and motivate them to pursue a career in science and technology.

With this goal in mind we are preparing an interactive iBook, providing an introduction to the field and providing an overview of the different approaches and technological advances being made in the field. With a target audience of mid to upper high school children we are aiming to create an interactive online book that can be downloaded for free, which will contain high resolution images, movies and interactive models that will stimulate the interest of students in school and at home.

Progress so far

To date, we have produced a set of chapters. Content includes simple explanations and concepts, the history of procedures such as organ transplantations and transfusions and information about technologies such as bioprinters, bioreactors, MRI and CT imaging, and electrospinners.

Imagine a world a new heart, or kidney, or lung, could be picked off a shelf and transplanted to a patient that needed it, where a lost limb could be regained, where healing a burn could be as easy as printing a photo…

Also covered is current regenerative medicine and tissue engineering technology and advanced/successful clinical trials, along with potential future technologies, such as limb regeneration and whole organ bioprinting.

Chapters have been contracted to experts in their respective fields, who will use their current research and data, written in a format that is easy to understand and includes as much visual and interactive information as possible.

Future plans

As we have been collecting text, data and visual/interactive materials, it has become apparent that it is quite complicated to ensure interactive iBook is compatible with multiple devices (such as PC, Mac, Android, iPad and iPhone). For this reason we are contracting our IT/development work to an IT specialist, with a background of publishing interactive iBooks. Once a preliminary draft is completed for the iBook, we will distribute to a local high school class and provide students with a survey to provide feedback and comments. We will then make relevant changes to the iBook before the uploading online and advertisements to schools that the book is available for download.

Following completion of trials of the beta version of the book, the final version will be widely available for school classes and children at home to further their education in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.