iFIND technology accelerator

The technology developed within iFIND has potential to have a significant impact on fetal screening.

Undiscovered fetal anomalies can have a lifelong impact on the families affected, with huge cost to health services as well as substantial wider societal impact. iFIND technology could reduce both by improving detection rates in fetal screening programmes with scope for deployment across the UK, throughout Europe and in the many less systematic fetal assessment services worldwide.

To achieve this it is essential to transition from University developed technology to healthcare products. The usual strategy is to licence to an existing player or spin-out a company.

However, in both cases the close coupling between technology innovation and clinical testing, which has proved so valuable in accelerating progress within iFIND, gets stressed or broken.

Another important factor is that iFIND technology is disruptive to current products so is challenging for existing companies to embrace.

Taking these two together, we propose an innovative approach in which commercial prototype development is undertaken by an embedded team of engineers working within a close coupled clinical testing and validation cycle.

This will provide opportunities not available by either of the conventional commercialisation routes, providing an effective pathway to impact.