My work in clinical medicine and medical technology led me to a question that has stayed with me: could changes in oxygen availability become a controlled tool in clinical care?
Research into cellular oxygen sensing gave us a reason to investigate whether repeated changes in oxygen availability could support longer-term adaptation. But the medical task was equally important: how to deliver that stimulus with appropriate safeguards when people respond differently.
Measurement, dose and safety had to work together
A fixed exposure time could not, on its own, describe the physiological load experienced by every patient. The oxygen mixture described what we delivered. We also needed to understand how the person responded. That made measurement, individual dosing and safety parts of the same medical task.
The AiMediq team created medical intermittent hypoxic–hyperoxic treatment and its individual physiological dosing. We brought these inventions together in the ReOxy medical device.
From clinical insight to medical engineering
We established AiMediq in Luxembourg in 2010 and worked with specialists in respiratory medical devices in Germany. Developing ReOxy meant bringing the medical idea and the engineering into the same system: how to measure, how to control exposure and recovery, how to build in protective functions and how to document a treatment.
Clinical research has remained part of the development. Much of the original team is still together, carrying what we have learnt from physiology, engineering and clinical practice into the next stage.
The next stage begins with a clinical question
My ambition is to make useful medical technology available to more people than any one clinician could reach. For ReOxy, that means expanding the evidence, working with clinicians and developing each application with the care it requires.
That is the work I want this company to continue.
An edited account of the team's motivation and development history. The documented chronology and named inventors are set out on the company history page.