PERA
Wearable Recording and Machine-Learning Analysis of Intestinal Activity
Duration
2023 – 2024
Affiliation
- Imperial College London · Dyson School of Design Engineering
- Royal College of Art · School of Design
Role
- Co-Founder, PERA Health Ltd.
- Embedded Systems Lead (wearable hardware architecture)
- Hardware Designer (sensor integration & enclosure)
- Researcher (bowel health monitoring & biomarker sensing)
Co-Founders & Collaborators
- Maria Asif · PERA Health Ltd.
- Sven Winkler von Stiernhielm · PERA Health Ltd.
- Alexander Spencer · PERA Health Ltd.
Award
- Helen Hamlyn Award for Creativity - Winner · £2,000
- Northumbrian Water Award for Inclusive Innovation - Winner · £1,000
- WE Innovate - 3rd Prize · £5,000 (Imperial Enterprise Lab)
- Mayor's Entrepreneur Competition - Semi-Finalist
Exhibition
- Open House Exhibition, Imperial College London, 2024
- Helen Hamlyn Award Exhibition, RCA Battersea, London, 2024
- PERA Showcase, Royal College of Art, London, 2023
Bowel conditions affect hundreds of millions of people globally, yet the data available to clinicians remains sparse. Symptoms are reported retrospectively, from memory, in clinical settings that rarely reflect daily life. PERA was developed to change this: a discreet wearable device that continuously records intestinal acoustic activity and applies machine learning to identify patterns associated with bowel health biomarkers, producing a longitudinal record that neither the patient nor clinician previously had access to.
The hardware architecture centred on a compact, skin-contact acoustic sensor array designed for sustained wear across daily activity. Embedded signal processing filtered ambient noise and isolated the frequency signatures of intestinal movement. The team collaborated with gastroenterology researchers and patient communities to calibrate what the system should detect and how it should be worn, ensuring that the device remained unobtrusive in daily life while maintaining clinical-grade signal fidelity. The enclosure was designed to be discreet, body-conforming, and manufacturable at low cost, constraints treated not as compromises but as design requirements that reflected the realities of chronic condition management.
PERA received the Helen Hamlyn Award for Creativity and the Northumbrian Water Award for Inclusive Innovation jointly, and was awarded 3rd Prize at WE Innovate through the Imperial Enterprise Lab. The project was exhibited at the Helen Hamlyn Award Exhibition at RCA Battersea, the Open House Exhibition at Imperial College London, and the PERA Showcase at the Royal College of Art.
Wearable prototype development, sensor integration testing, and exhibition documentation at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art.