The Holland Hybrid Heart (HHH) consortium aims to do the necessary fundamental research up until the animal trials to produce an artificial heart. The goals for this heart will be that it will be pliable, has a pulsatile flow and has a tissue-engineered lining wherever human blood touches that heart. Our consortium acknowledges that this project will only be successful if we can unlock the brains and talents of our researchers. We therefore organize ourselves into research teams that aim to accomplish clear, identifiable but challenging goals.
Twice a year the entire group convenes for the Integration week. A week in which we attempt to put together everything we have built. During these weeks we hope to fail a lot, learn a lot, have a lot of fun together and make plans for the next half year.
Our goals are to develop the HHH prototype based on existing knowledge and developments. The prototype must contain two ventricles including artificial valves, that work in a pulsatile manner. Main challenges will be:
- Design and fabrication of the prototypes.
- Think along an active or passive balancing mechanism and its implementation to the prototype and follow-up evaluations towards validation and further optimizations.
- Energy efficiency.
- Size minimization.
- Develop a platform for testing different prototypes which facilitate and speed up experiments.