Background

Dr Matthew Rooney, director of Sekatech Ltd, was referred to HealthTech by Advantage West Midlands’s Medical Cluster Manager.  Matthew is a consultant anaesthetist at the Heart of England Foundation Trust.  Some 10 years ago, whilst working as a clinical registrar, he came up with the idea for a turbidimeter:  a device that measures how cloudy a fluid is. He thought it could be used to measure blood loss during surgery.  It could also be made very cheaply and as a disposable device to measure haemoglobin in blood at the point of care. Haemoglobin is the protein in the red blood cells that carry oxygen around the body. Anaemic patients have a low haemoglobin concentration. 

It is difficult to accurately determine blood loss during operations using the traditional method of ‘eyeballing’ volume of liquids ie accounting for blood in swabs, on clothing or on the theatre floor.  Alternatively there are analysers that measure haemoglobin at the point of care but they are expensive to buy and are often shared between a number of theatres and may not be to hand.  It normally takes at least an hour to get a result from the laboratories so often doctors have to guess what the haemoglobin is before they start transfusing blood.  

The current methods for determining blood loss during operations are inaccurate or time consuming which means that some patients will not get a blood transfusion even though they may need it but just as important some patients may get blood when they do not need it.  The consequences of such actions are longer stays in hospital and wastage of blood.

 Technology

Matthew’s concept uses a simple plastic moulding to dilute the blood and present it in such a way that the haemoglobin concentration can be viewed directly on a scale. Its simplicity means that it can be mass-produced at very low cost. It can also be adapted to measure visual changes in other fluids for other applications. Phase

Matthew had successfully done some initial validation with a small number of home- made prototypes.  An attempt to license the concept in the early stages failed as the company lost interest.  Matthew owns patent rights in Europe and the US.  He asked HealthTech to provide support in terms of product development and commercialisation.

HealthTech Support

We helped Matthew to develop a clear vision for his product and his involvement in its development: we helped him to pursue another licensing agreement but also support the worst case scenario of developing the product and commercialisation himself.

HealthTech Actions

Competitive benchmarking demonstrated that there were no other low cost, disposable and point of care haemoglobin measuring devices.  We drew up a list of manufacturers with complementary products that would potentially be interested in a license.  B Braun was approached and after a number of meetings in the UK Matthew flew to Germany for further talks.  We introduced him to a model maker who was able to make another small series of prototypes to help with validation.  We also helped him to successfully apply for an Innovation Network grant and other funding.  In addition, Matthew has developed partnerships with tool makers, injection moulders and design agencies.

Results

Again the potential license deal fell through as the company decided that it would not be a core product.  In the meantime Matthew has successfully applied for a £25,000 Transfer of Technology Grant from BRDL and has developed a partnership that covers design, small batch prototyping, regulatory affairs and sales & marketing.  Currently Matthew is in talks with a large global manufacturer.