A Colchester student has won a prestigious engineering fellowship as he develops a potentially life-saving device for knife wounds.

Joseph Bentley, 23, has been awarded the 1851 Enterprise Fellowship at the Royal Academy of Engineering.

His React device, which stands for Rapid Emergency Actuating Tamponade, aims to help police treat knife wounds while waiting for medical assistance to arrive.

Stab victims can bleed to death in just five minutes, so the priority for emergency personnel is to stop excessive blood loss.

Mr Bentley, who studied at Colchester Royal Grammar School, said wound management techniques, such as tightly packing with gauze, can be slow, technical, and painful for the victim.

He claims his prototype could potentially be in place and stop haemorrhage in under a minute, and estimates it could save hundreds of lives a year.

Mr Bentley, who is from Witham, was inspired after two of his friends were victims of knife related incidents.

Mr Bentley has won his fellowship after undergoing a rigorous application process.

Admission comes with £50,000 of equity-free funding, which Mr Bentley 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.”

Mr Bentley founded ACT Medical while a member of Loughborough University.

He was the first-ever winner of the International Medical James Dyson Award in 2021 and receiving £30,000 in prize money.