headshot of Joseph Bentley

Joseph Bentley.

ACT Medical founder Joseph Bentley accepted for Enterprise Fellowship at Royal Academy of Engineering

Loughborough University alumnus and ACT Medical founder Joseph Bentley has won an 1851 Enterprise Fellowship at the Royal Academy of Engineering as he continues to develop his award-winning system for reducing the number of deaths from knife wounds.

His Rapid Emergency Actuating Tamponade system is a portable handheld device that inserts an expanding tamponade into knife and gunshot wounds to reduce catastrophic blood loss.

Joseph’s vision is that it will be used by first responders - including paramedics and police officers - to help save lives around the world.

In the year ending March 2019, 259 people were killed in the UK by a sharp instrument. A victim of a stabbing can bleed to death in just five minutes.

Speed is essential in stemming blood loss from the wound. Research during prototyping suggests that the device could stop a haemorrhage in less than a minute.

Joseph was accepted for the RAEng 1851 Royal Commission Enterprise Fellowship after a rigorous application and selection process.

Admission comes with £50,000 of equity-free funding, which Joseph will use to continue the development and testing of the system.

He said: “It is a great honour to be selected for this prestigious programme of training and mentorship by the Royal Academy.

“This Enterprise Fellowship will accelerate our plans for product development and testing, allowing us to get our device into the hands of first responders as soon as possible.”

The 1851 Enterprise Fellowship also brings a host of other benefits, including tailored mentoring and training, access to the Academy’s networks, and lifetime membership of its Enterprise Hub.

Those who complete the programme also gain a package of lifetime support, including access to facilities, training programmes, PR and media support, networks of investors, experts, advisors, and Academy Fellows.

To date the Enterprise Hub has provided training, mentoring, and £9.7 million in grant funding to more than 150 Enterprise Fellows.

ACT Medical has already filed for patent protection. Research and development is now underway as to how the device can be engineered, tested and manufactured to meet the high medical standard required to take it to market.

Joseph graduated from Loughborough University’s Product Design and Technology BSc in 2021. He founded ACT Medical while a member of Loughborough University incubator LUinc.

ACT Medical has already gained significant recognition for its potential, being the first-ever winner of the International Medical James Dyson Award in 2021 and receiving £30,000 in prize money.

More recently, ACT Medical won the University Innovation category of this year’s LeicestershireLive Innovation Awards.

For more information about how Loughborough University helps its graduates and spinouts develop as entrepreneurs, visit The Studio webpage.

Notes for editors

Press release reference number: 22/138

Loughborough is one of the country’s leading universities, with an international reputation for research that matters, excellence in teaching, strong links with industry, and unrivalled achievement in sport and its underpinning academic disciplines.

It has been awarded five stars in the independent QS Stars university rating scheme, named the best university in the world for sports-related subjects in the 2022 QS World University Rankings and University of the Year for Sport by The Times and Sunday Times University Guide 2022.

Loughborough is in the top 10 of every national league table, being ranked 7th in The UK Complete University Guide 2022, and 10th in both the Guardian University League Table 2022 and the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2022.

Loughborough is consistently ranked in the top twenty of UK universities in the Times Higher Education’s ‘table of tables’ and is in the top 10 in England for research intensity. In recognition of its contribution to the sector, Loughborough has been awarded seven Queen's Anniversary Prizes.

The Loughborough University London campus is based on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and offers postgraduate and executive-level education, as well as research and enterprise opportunities. It is home to influential thought leaders, pioneering researchers and creative innovators who provide students with the highest quality of teaching and the very latest in modern thinking.

Categories