UK MedTech company makes breakthrough in diabetes technology

Oxford Medical Diagnostics's analyser has been shown to measure acetone from human breath at below one part per million (ppm), representing a significant step forward in the development of new technologies for screening, diagnosing and monitoring diabetes, which affects around 5% of the population in the UK. Having successfully tested a prototype, the company is now looking to manufacture a commercial version at less than a tenth of the cost of a suitable mass spectrometer, the alternative method currently used.

“Accuracy at one ppm is key to the instruments operation as a breath analyser”, said Diana Davies, chief executive of Oxford Medical Diagnostics. “Healthy people exhale around 0.5 ppm acetone, whereas for untreated or undiagnosed diabetics, the level can rise to 10 times that amount.”

The technology is being welcomed by experts in the field. Julie Edge, a paediatric clinician at Oxford Children’s Hospital, has agreed to test the device on the first young patient. She said: “The burden of Type I diabetes in children is great. Children, as young as babies and toddlers, are required to have up to 10 finger pricks a day to check their blood glucose levels, as well as having several injections of insulin a day.

“Any advance which would reduce the number of invasive tests a child needs to carry out would be very welcome. A non-invasive method of measuring blood glucose levels and blood ketones would be a valuable adjunct to patient care in this age group.”

As well as the desk-top analyser, the company is also working on a hand-held device for patients that will replace invasive finger prick blood glucose monitoring equipment. It hopes to have this ready for out-licensing by 2013.

“The hand-held device will revolutionise at-patient management of diabetes, eventually making the use of invasive blood glucose monitoring devices obsolete,” said John Jack, company chairman.