Brain sensor pioneer is NZer of the Year finalist

Fourteen years ago, Simon Malpas, a Professor at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, received an email that would change his life.

Pediatric neurosurgeon Dr Peter Heppner asked if Malpas could help with a problem he and colleagues around the world had with a life-threatening brain condition called hydrocephalus.

Caused by fluid building up in the brain, hydrocephalus has been treated for decades by inserting a tiny silicon tube, which drains fluid from the brain harmlessly into the abdomen.

The problem, Heppner wrote, was the tubes were prone to blocking, particularly in children. Around 50 percent of shunts in children fail in the first two years.

Worse, the symptoms of a blocked tube – headaches, nausea, tiredness and irritability – could just as easily be caused by something far less dangerous.

Adults with hydrocephalus, and parents of children with the condition, are constantly on a knife-edge looking out for symptoms and then having to decide whether to rush to hospital or go to bed with paracetamol.

Around 70 percent of the time, when people turn up in the emergency room with symptoms that suggest their shunt might be failing, it’s a false alarm.

 Could Malpas, who had spent much of his career studying pressure in the brain and the heart, come up with a tube that didn’t block? Heppner asked.

Malpas looked into it and had some bad news and some good news for the neurosurgeon.

“I knew fixing the problem of the shunts failing would be incredibly challenging – hundreds and hundreds of people had tried that without success.”

But what if you could come up with a sensor which could measure brain pressure – in a patient's home – so if someone with hydrocephalus got a headache they knew whether their shunt was failing or not?

“There began the journey. I thought ‘maybe I can get a little grant and a student to explore this’. And that looked promising, so we came up with early concept ideas, and then in 2017 we got an MBIE [Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment] grant for $12 million and the whole team came together.”

Fast forward seven years, and Malpas now has a spin-out company, Kitea Health, which has developed an implantable wireless sensor which is just two centimetres long and weighs 0.3 grams. The sensor has no battery, but is activated remotely by a hand-held ‘wand’.

A world-first medical trial which began in June 2024 saw the sensors implanted into adult participants; following excellent safety data, children were able to join the trial recently.

 “After working on this for 14 years, I was in the operating theatre when they put the first sensor in and we did the first measurements and it was pretty emotional," Malpas says. "Then I went to the patient’s home a couple of weeks after they left hospital and watched them do their own brain pressure readings. That was another emotional moment.

“They were using the technology we have worked on for so long - and it works!”

Learning he is one of three shortlisted finalists for the Spark New Zealand Innovator of the Year award, one of the categories in the prestigious Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year award Is the icing on the cake after a huge few months for everyone on the project.

“It’s great recognition for the team, some of whom have been with me right from the start.”

Changing lives 

Early in Malpas’ career he says he made a decision to move the focus of his work from a more traditional academic research path to research with a more immediate and practical impact.

The tiny wireless hydrocephalus sensor and the external wand which brings it to life whenever a patient wants to take a brain pressure reading, are already changing the lives of people on the trial, he says.

“We always hoped it would work well and be useful, but it has proved even more life-changing than we imagined. The impact is not only in terms of clinical outcomes, but also we’ve seen how it reduces the anxiety for people around their condition and helps them to live the life they want.”

One Auckland-based woman has long wished to move closer to family in rural Northland, Malpas says, but with the constant uncertainty around whether her shunt was failing or not every time she felt a bit unwell, it was too stressful being hours from the nearest neurosurgical facility.

“Now she can take regular brain pressure readings from home she has the confidence she can move to be near her family.

“This technology will change the clinical treatment and improve the lives of thousands, potentially millions of people around the world. But it’s been a long journey.”

And it’s not over yet. Funding is now the critical factor for Kitea Health to get its sensor into the hands (or rather the brains) of everyone who needs it.

The company is currently looking for investment via the Snowball Effect crowd funding platform so it can run larger clinical trials as a precursor to regulatory approvals.

The capital raise is close to its $7 million minimum target, with the maximum set at $10 million.

The winners of the New Zealander of the Year awards will be announced on March 20.