Philips launches handheld rapid blood test for heart attack diagnosis

Philips announced the launch of a new handheld blood test, the Minicare I-20 system, for rapid diagnosis of a heart attack at the point of care. The new test is being introduced in selected countries in Europe including the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, with introduction in other European countries following in due course. As a result, patients with chest pain presenting at the emergency department are set to benefit from this major innovation, which Philips has recently CE marked for compliance with the European in vitro diagnostic medical devices directive. The handheld Minicare I-20 system measures the level of cardiac troponin I (cTnI), a protein that is excreted by the heart muscle into the blood following a heart attack. It delivers test results, comparable with those obtained by laboratory testing, in less than 10 minutes near the patient, reducing the time for a physician to decide on the appropriate treatment pathway.

  

The Minicare I-20 system is the latest innovation to come out of Philips’ global R&D and new business development programs in the area of point-of-care testing and monitoring applications for the hospital and the home. It consists of a connected handheld analyzer, dedicated software, and a single-use disposable cartridge containing an application specific test based on Philips’ proprietary biosensor technology.

“The commercial launch of the Minicare I-20 system for cardiac troponin I testing represents a major milestone for us,” said Marcel van Kasteel, CEO of Handheld Diagnostics at Philips. “I am convinced that we will be able to make a real difference for patients and care providers. Minicare I-20 is designed to help care providers reduce both the time-to-treatment and time-to-discharge of patients, thereby helping to reduce crowding in emergency departments and improve the utilization of hospital resources.”

“Blood samples are usually analyzed in the hospital laboratory, and it can easily take more than an hour to get the result back to the emergency department physician,” said Dr. Paul Collinson, Consultant Chemical Pathologist at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UK). “Point-of-care testing can significantly help to reduce the turnaround time.”

The Minicare I-20 was tested in real-life acute care settings within the European Lab2Go project, a consortium of European hospitals. The study showed the potential of Philips Minicare cTnI system to accurately measure cTnI values, near the patient in the emergency department, with a turnaround time of less than 10 minutes.

A press release can be found from Philips website by following this link.

Massachusetts General Hospital developed device for rapid diagnosis of bacterial infections

A team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has developed a device with the potential of shortening the time required to rapidly diagnose pathogens responsible for health-care-associated infections from a couple of days to a matter of hours. The system described in the journal Science Advances also would allow point-of-care diagnosis, as it does not require the facilities and expertise available only in hospital laboratories.

“Health-care-associated infections are a major problem that affects more than 600,000 patients each year, more than 10 percent of whom will die, and incurs more $100 billion in related costs,” says Ralph Weissleder, MD, PhD, director of the MGH Center for Systems Biology, Thrall Family Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and co-senior author of the report. “Rapid and efficient diagnosis of the pathogen is a critical first step in choosing the appropriate antibiotic regimen, and this system could provide that information in a physician’s office in less than two hours.”

While considered the gold standard for diagnosing bacterial infections, traditional culture-based diagnosis can take several days and requires specialized equipment, trained laboratory personnel and procedures that vary depending on the particular pathogen. Emerging genetic approaches that identify bacterial species by their nucleic acid sequences are powerful but still require complex equipment and workflows, restricting such testing to specialized hospital laboratories.



The system developed by the MGH team, dubbed PAD for Polarization Anisotropy Diagnostics, allows for accurate genetic testing in a simple device. Bacterial RNA is extracted from a sample in a small, disposable plastic cartridge. Following polymerase chain reaction amplification of the RNA, the material is loaded into a 2-cm plastic cube containing optical components that detect target RNAs based on the response to a light signal of sequence-specific detection probes. These optical cubes are placed on an electronic base station that transmits data to a smartphone or computer where the results can be displayed.

More details can be found from MGH website by clicking here.