Wirral health tech venture Simed Global is close to taking its ‘transformative’ medical testing device to market after four years of development. Tony McDonough reports

Birkenhead health tech firm Simed Global is set to take its “transformative” diagnostic device to market.

Simed Global was launched by entrepreneur Simon Maurer four years ago. Its 15-strong team has been developing a new device that will allow for instant screening for population diseases, with results in 50 seconds.

Based at Woodside Business Park, the venue also has offices in Newcastle and London. Over the past four years it has raised £1.75m in private equity investment. Wirral resident Dr Patrick Druggan is its chief scientific officer.

Simon is in talks with investors in the North West of England and is also visiting India in June. He told LBN: “This is to discuss distribution opportunities for major companies with operations based there but with a global reach.”

He was inspired to start the business after learning about the volume of unnecessary prescriptions for antibiotics and how this leads to the development of antibiotic resistance.

He added: “Analysis from UK studies have shown for example, that antibiotic prescriptions are only appropriate in 9% of cases where 50% are currently being unnecessarily prescribed.

“Over prescription of antibiotics leads to adverse events where a patient has an unanticipated reaction to the antibiotic. These adverse events cost around £300m annually.”

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Simon questions why there have been no non-invasive, instant point of care tests that allow clinicians to tackle this problem and to reduce costs of healthcare, and risk to patients.

“There are 1257 hospitals and 15,500 GP practices in the UK where point of contact testing could be carried out for respiratory infections,” he explained.

Once launched it is projected that more than 300 devices will be placed in the UK and EU, carrying out 1m tests. This represents less than 1% of the total number of visits in the UK and EU combined.