Public Funding for Datalink Electronics Limited

Patients with advanced kidney disease, who are reliant on peritoneal dialysis (PD), and advanced liver disease patients, with liver cirrhosis, are both at risk of life-threatening infection in the abdomen, referred to as 'peritonitis'. This develops quickly, and typically requires hospital admission. The choice of antibiotic therapy has to be made by doctors 'blind', based on an educated guess. After around 4 days antibiotic susceptibility information arrives from the hospital's centralised microbiology laboratories. Frequently the choice of antibiotics is then modified, however by then the infection may have progressed appreciably, in many cases fatally, and most patients are extremely ill. Managing these patients is very expensive for health-care providers, with this exacerbated as PD patients must permanently switch to more expensive haemodialysis. There is an urgent need for doctors managing these critically ill patients to rapidly and reliably obtain antibiotic sensitivity information. Microbiosensor is a Manchester-based company developing products miniaturising and speeding up conventional high quality hospital microbiology tests. These are made available in a simple, and inexpensive form for use at the bedside with vulnerable patient groups. We have previously developed a device (QuickCheck) to screen for peritonitis in the homes of PD patients, where the therapy is normally carried out. This test takes ten hours (running alongside overnight PD as the patient sleeps) and if positive initiates further hospital antibiotic sensitivity investigations. We are currently developing a product for elderly urinary tract infection patients in care homes, quickly providing antibiotic susceptibility information (STAR). The proposed PeriFAST product is our most ambitious yet, and will test peritoneal fluid from both liver and PD patients, which of 10 antibiotics will be effective in four hours, displaying this information clearly on an electronic screen. We will work in a consortium with two long-established UK companies. Tagdraw Ltd (trading as Smallfry) are an innovative design consultancy for medical products and Datalink Electronics are a contract high technology electronics design and manufacturing company. In the project we will adapt our chemistry for use with new antibiotics and liver patients, design a disposable cassette to house the test, develop an electronic reader to provide the result, check the new system works with real peritonitis samples and manage the IP. By project end, we will be ready for the product to enter its final clinical assessment before CE marking. The product will be sold on an annual tariff basis, and address large potential global markets.

Awaiting Public Summary

Awaiting Public Summary