A Liverpool City Region health technology company is on the verge of bringing life-changing medical devices to the market in 2024 via their Birkenhead headquarters.
Simed Global, a diagnostics business has been working for the past four years to manufacture platform technology at Woodside Business Park that will allow for instant screening for population diseases, with results in 50 seconds.
Founded by serial entrepreneur Simon Maurer, the company currently has 15 people working on the innovation in Birkenhead with local resident Dr Patrick Druggan as its Chief Scientific Officer. It also has offices in Newcastle and London.
Maurer began the business four years ago and has attracted significant private equity investment to date totalling £1.75m.
He is currently in talks with further investors in the North West region and is also visiting India in June.
“This is to discuss distribution opportunities for major companies with operations based there but with a global reach,” he confirmed.
Maurer cites the volume of unnecessary prescriptions for antibiotics and how this leads to the development of antibiotic resistance as a major driver in initially establishing the business.
“Analysis from UK studies have shown for example, that antibiotic prescriptions are only appropriate in 9 % of cases (Schneider et al., 2020) 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 £300 million annually.”
Maurer has long questioned 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 15500 General Practitioner practices in the UK where point of contact testing could be carried out for respiratory infections.”
After three years it is projected that more than 300 instruments will be placed in the UK and EU, carrying out one million tests. This represents less than 1 % of the total number of visits in the UK and EU combined.
believes the remainder of 2024 will prove to be a transformative year for the sector.
