UK MedTech firm Presymptom Health has secured £200,000 in additional grant funding to speed-up its AI-driven infection detection technology, cutting test times to just 40-60 minutes. Presymptom Health will also use the funding to make its rapid tests compatible with a variety of widely available PCR machines, streamlining diagnostics is secondary care.
Presymptom’s InfectiClear technology can detect infection up to three days earlier than current methods by analysing the body’s RNA-based response - rather than searching for the pathogen itself. Trained and validated on 15 years’ worth of patient data, the AI-driven test ensures that doctors can correctly detect the presence, or lack, of infection, at the earliest possible opportunity. This approach provides an early, highly sensitive signal for infection or sepsis and avoids the delays and inaccuracies often seen with traditional tests, which can lead to unnecessary or incorrect treatments.
Dr Iain Miller (pictured above), CEO of Presymptom Health comments: "The NHS (and most hospitals around the world) relies on a variety of PCR platforms from different manufacturers, which can make rolling out new diagnostic tests a challenge. By ensuring our technology is broadly compatible across multiple platforms, we’re making it easier for hospitals to adopt faster, more accurate infection detection. Whether tests are run at the point of care by nurses or in laboratories by technicians, this flexibility means better diagnoses for all patients. Ultimately, this will improve patient outcomes while also helping the fight against antimicrobial resistance."
The funding consists of £100k in funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Grant. This NIHR grant will enable Presymptom to make its technology compatible with the PCR platform manufactured by QuantuMDx. The QuantuMDx platform can deliver results in 40 minutes and tests will be available at the point of care.
The remaining £100k is from the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Healthcare Grant – a funding program designed to provide financial support to early-stage healthcare innovations with potential to improve patient care and system efficiency. This SBRI phase one grant will help Presymptom Health make its technology compatible with the Mic PCR platform manufactured by Bio Molecular Systems (BMS), which is widely used across the NHS. Tests run on the BMS platforms can potentially deliver results in under one hour when undertaken in the laboratory.
As part of the SBRI grant, Presymptom will run a six-month feasibility project alongside Health Innovation Oxford and Thames Valley (HIOTV), to understand barriers to entry and the best approach for the NHS adopting this new technology.
The news of these two new grants comes off the back of previously announced funding from Innovate UK in 2024 directed to delivering InfectiClear technology on the ThermoFisher Scientific Quantstudio 5 PCR platform – another PCR platform widely used across the NHS.
Presymptom Health was established to exploit IP developed by scientists working at the UK Defence Science & Technologies Laboratory (Dstl), initially researching how to tackle biological threat infection, such as anthrax, plague and Ebola. Ploughshare – the company that finds new and inspiring uses for government inventions – identified the innovation as having potential societal impact and spun it out from the UK Ministry of Defence in 2019.
Presymptom Health’s InfectiClear technology has shown great promise in recent clinical trials, with early results showing that the product may have more than 95% accuracy at ruling out lower respiratory tract infection, a significant improvement over standard of care. The company is also planning to raise a Series A funding round over the coming months to help it accelerate its expansion into the US market.