This is the virtual launch event for the Future Blood Testing Network! The Future Blood Testing Network+ is a new Network funded by EPSRC. We are aiming to build a multi-disciplinary community to develop digital health technologies for remote, rapid, affordable and inclusive monitoring and personalised analytics.
At the Future Blood Testing Network Plus, we are aiming to build a multi-disciplinary community to develop digital health technologies for remote, rapid, affordable and inclusive monitoring and personalised analytics. This two day workshop will feature speakers to discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with this. We will also be launching our second funding call for both our technical landscape report, and for our pilot projects. This event will run as a hybrid event, the physical event will take place at the University of Reading. Both days will include lunch and coffee breaks, with Day 1 also including a drinks reception with canapés, and dinner. Virtual attendees will be able to join us via Zoom.
The Future Blood Testing: Challenges and Opportunities conference, held on September 13-14, 2022, brought together experts in digital health technologies to discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with the advancements in remote, rapid, affordable, and inclusive blood testing. This hybrid event took place at the University of Reading, with both physical and virtual attendees participating … Continue reading Future Blood Testing: Challenges and Opportunities – Conference 2022 Summary and Outcomes
At the Future Blood Testing Network Plus, we are aiming to build a multi-disciplinary community to develop digital health technologies for remote, rapid, affordable and inclusive monitoring and personalised analytics. This two day workshop will feature speakers to discuss the future of healthcare, remote blood testing, monitoring and artificial intelligence (AI).
This event will run as a hybrid event, the physical event will take place at Jurys Inn, Southampton. Both days will include lunch and coffee breaks, with day 1 also including a drinks reception with dinner. Virtual attendees will be able to join us via Zoom.
The Future Blood Testing Network Plus workshop, held on November 7th-8th, 2023 at Leonardo Hotel Southampton, brought together a multi-disciplinary community to develop digital health technologies for remote, rapid, affordable, and inclusive monitoring and personalized analytics. This two-day event featured speakers who discussed the future of healthcare, remote blood testing, monitoring, and artificial intelligence (AI).
The idea of conducting tests for an infectious disease on the kitchen table would have seemed unimaginable only three years ago; now, it is a routine part of life in the UK. Similarly, measuring health markers such as heart rate or blood pressure used to involve a trip to your GP's surgery; now, they are measured by your watch. Routine testing of cellular function may be the next step, supplying data on cellular changes that occur before the presentation of symptoms or rapidly assessing the efficacy of therapies. Platelets play a vital role in chronic and acute cardiovascular disease but also have roles in immunity, inflammation, cancer metastasis, Alzheimer's disease and infections, such as dengue, HIV-1, malaria, and COVID-19. In addition, they are easily obtained from subjects or patients, making them valuable biomarkers for changes in blood vessels associated with disease, ageing or therapy. This seminar will introduce the utility of platelets as a cellular biomarker and the progress we have made in designing tests that capture the function of these cells, both in the lab and at point-of-care.
Zimmer and Peacock has worked on the development and manufacture of a platform intended to translate academic blood testing assays from the lab into the clinical setting, and onto the market. At ZP, for research to be impactful and sustainable, it does need to be presented in a form factor so that it can be easily used by clinicians and patients. In this webinar and live streaming demo, ZP will show how a scientific paper can easily become a clinical product. The policy at ZP is to translate science into regulatory approved products in 2 years or less.
The ambitious NHS Digital Transformation Programme faces challenges in delivering efficient and intuitive information to health professionals. Since 2009, we have worked as a small team at University Hospital Southampton (UHS) Clinical Data Estate. Using e-data visualisation principles and a highly agile and iterative approach with minimal financial resources, we have developed a transformative approach to the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) interface.
On UHS Lifelines, the timeframe is continuously incremental as new content accumulates. The interface opens near instantaneously in real time and documents from any time point are immediately accessible without scrolling through lists, menus, multiple frames and software subsystems, and the clinical history can be read subliminally to a valuable degree from the icon patterns. Despite initial constraints, the system evolved into a powerful application at the heart of UHS EPR. Additionally, it led to other software solutions, such as the SCR+ (Somerset Cancer Registry Enhanced) Multi-Disciplinary Team Module for cancer data management. We believe our approach has broad applicability beyond healthcare, potentially benefiting various sectors. We therefore appreciate all opportunities for collaboration to expand the project's impact nationally and beyond.
Although the need for better diagnostics, especially point-of-care testing, is clear, the uptake of novel technology lags a long way behind demonstration and research papers. Using several case studies from my own research, alongside insight from current state-of-the art notably in diagnostics for microbiology and infection, I will outline the technological basis for bioassay miniaturisation (i.e. tiny blood tests) and discuss the diagnostics innovation pathway. Examples will include a review of >10 years developing microfluidic quantitative multiplex immunoassays that can measure multiple biomarkers in blood, as well as our latest developments in measuring platelet cell function directly in blood.
A major issue facing the diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease is the availability of an accessible, scalable, and highly sensitive technology. Compelling evidence now suggests that the abundance of blood-based dementia biomarkers, including ß-amyloid (Aß) and tau, and their ratios, change considerably before clinical symptoms arise. Assessing these parameters via a straightforward blood test could facilitate early-stage diagnosis, recruitment of patients into clinical trials, and open a platform for at-home treatment monitoring. Current technologies for biomarker analysis are resource-intensive, rely on cerebrospinal fluid extraction, and are not widely adopted. Here, we demonstrate the detection of blood-based biomarkers using a next-generation, label-free photonic biosensor based on the principle of chirped guided mode resonance (GMR) spectroscopy. Our handheld GMR device is a low-cost optical biosensor suitable for the real-time, sensitive and parallel detection of dementia biomarkers. The technology utilizes wavelength scale grating structures to excite a standing wave that is sensitive to refractive index changes on the sensor surface. When target biomarkers bind to antibodies on the sensor surface, a refractive index change gives rise to a detectable shift in resonance wavelength. The chirped element of the GMR translates spectral information into spatial position, allowing biomarker binding to be detected by imaging the spatial position of the optical resonance on a simple camera detector. Our label-free technology outperforms competing modalities including surface plasmon approaches, has demonstrable sensitivity to pg/mL concentrations of low molecular weight protein biomarkers, offers a wide dynamic range, is mechanically and thermally stable, enables the real-time detection of at least eight biomarkers in parallel, and corrects for non-specific binding. By applying our biosensing approach to the detection of dementia biomarkers, we have demonstrated the real-time and quantitative detection of Aß in laboratory analytes, paving the way for further developments towards a blood test technology to support disease diagnosis, at-home treatment monitoring, and the democratization of testing.
Register for this free teams webinar here: https://futurebloodtesting.org/event/2024-09-12 Abstract: Precision metabolomics and quantification for cost-effective rapid diagnosis of disease are the key goals in personalized medicine and point-of-care testing. At … Continue reading Multicorder – Enabling the Future of POC Diagnostics and Screening
Register for this free teams webinar here: https://futurebloodtesting.org/event/2024-09-27 Abstract: In this talk, Dr Stephen Lindsay will delve into the fundamental principles of participatory design, focusing on its role in democratizing the development of healthcare technologies. He will begin by exploring the core definition of participatory design, emphasizing its potential to empower users by involving them directly in … Continue reading Democratising Healthcare Technology: The Role and Challenges of Participatory Design in Healthcare
