Clinical Diagnostics - introduction

Molecular diagnostics is widely recognized to be a high growth sector within diagnostics that is having a significant impact on how patients are treated. We have worked closely with industry experts Scientia Advisors (http://www.scientiaadv.com/) to analyse this market. In particular Scientia have helped us to understand the emerging need of healthcare professionals for simple, easy to use molecular diagnostic systems.

We discovered three key un-met needs in this area:
• Simplicity – there is a strong desire for systems that reduce or eliminate manual steps in the sample preparation and analysis process
• Sophistication – most current tests provide simple indications of the presence or absence
of a single organism. There is a need for tests that can identify multiple organisms in a single sample and provide important diagnostic information such as antibiotic resistance or indications
of genetic mutation.
• Speed – a fast time-to result accelerates treatment times and provides important clinical and financial benefits

The Bio-Seeq clinical diagnostics platform is being designed to meet these needs. In particular it will focus on the need for rapid diagnosis of infectious disease in patient screening programmes and in critical care. It will provide simple, easy to use diagnostics suitable for use at or near the Point of Care in Accident and Emergency units, Critical Care laboratories and other locations where speed and accuracy are at a premium.

In addition we seek to: 
• Create solutions for Government sponsored pandemic preparedness programmes.
• Develop field portable diagnostics for use in military medicine
• Establish LATE PCR as a method of testing for genetic markers in the early stages of selected cancers.