A recent Nanosensors KTN seminar held at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington provided an opportunity to show how biotech, nanotechnology and electronics are being combined in a new generation of portable instruments. Dion Klunder, a scientist at Philips Research, described the trade-offs that go into taking a technology that uses small particles and putting it into something that can be used in the field.
Although the original plan was to use the Magnotech system as a drug detector that could be used by police in the same way they would use a breathaliser, the emphasis has switched at Philips to speeding up the diagnosis of medical conditions, kicking off with heart attacks. Bedside staff can use instruments like that to work out quickly what treatment the patient needs.
“If possible, you want to stratify patients in the ambulance,” said Klunder. “In that way you can enable minimally invasive medicine.”
The reality today is that it takes a while to get the results back from a central laboratory. Although the actual tests are quick, the delay lies in the amount of time it takes to get the sample there and the result back, on top of the time that a sample may have to wait before being processed.
