Under the radar: tackling the forgotten disease in our midst

我是Emma Hayhurst， Llusern Scientific的联合创始人兼首席执行官。Llusern的目的是通过克服准确诊断的障碍来解决医疗保健中的不平等问题，让每个人都有机会在需要时得到适当的诊断。我们开发了一种新型的分子诊断检测装置，可用于诊断Covid-19。我想利用这个创新奖来帮助我们开发一种诊断尿路感染（uti）的新测试。尿路感染是全球最常见的感染。患尿路感染的风险随着年龄的增长而增加，超过90%的患者是女性。任何患有尿路感染的人（超过50%的女性会这样做）都可以告诉你，即使是“不复杂的”尿路感染也会引起严重的疼痛和不适，但如果诊断和治疗不当，尿路感染也可能是致命的——在英格兰和威尔士，每年有超过5000人死于尿路感染。由于长期以来对尿路感染的诊断一直被忽视，治疗往往基于模糊或不准确的诊断工具，这意味着用于治疗尿路感染的数百万抗生素中有许多是不必要或不适当的。这有助于抗生素耐药性的传播。我们的测试将通过告诉全科医生某人是否患有尿路感染以及导致尿路感染的细菌来帮助解决这个问题，从而做出更好的治疗决定。我们的UTI测试是便携式的，快速（从样品到结果30分钟），价格合理且易于使用-不需要样品处理，用户需要不到一个小时的培训才能进行诊断测试。这个项目将允许Llusern在大量真实的临床样本上评估我们的UTI测试，并测试市场，以确定哪些地方最需要我们的产品，并获得更多的资金，将我们的UTI产品推向市场。我们的尿路感染测试有可能改变尿路感染的诊断——减少相关疾病和死亡，并导致更有针对性、更合适的抗生素处方。是时候停止忽视妇女和老年人的这种疾病了——依赖缓慢或不准确的诊断工具是不可接受的。

I am Emma Hayhurst, co-founder and CEO of Llusern Scientific. Llusern's purpose is to address inequalities in healthcare by overcoming barriers to accurate diagnostics -- giving everyone the chance to be diagnosed properly when they need to be. We have developed a novel molecular diagnostic testing device which can be used for the diagnosis of Covid-19\. I would like to use this Innovation award to help us develop a new test for the diagnosis of urinary tract infections (UTIs). UTIs are the most common infection globally. Risk of suffering from UTI increases with age -- and more than 90% of sufferers are women. Anyone who has suffered from a UTI (and over 50% of women will have done) can tell you that even an 'uncomplicated' UTI can cause severe pain and discomfort but UTIs can also be fatal if not properly diagnosed and treated -- over 5,000 people die from a UTI every year in England and Wales.Because UTI diagnosis has been overlooked for so long, treatments are often given on the basis of vague or inaccurate diagnostic tools and this means that many of the millions and millions of antibiotics prescribed to treat UTIs are unnecessary or inappropriate. This contributes to the spread of antibiotic resistance.Our test would help solve this issue by telling the GP whether someone has a UTI and what bacteria is causing that UTI, thus allowing better treatment decisions to be made. Our UTI test is portable, quick (30 mins from sample to result), affordable and easy to use -- no sample processing is required and users would need less than one hour's training to be able to carry out a diagnostic test.This project would allow Llusern to evaluate our UTI test on a large number of real clinical samples, as well as testing the market to work out exactly where there is most need for our product and securing more funding to bring our UTI product to market. Our UTI test has the potential to be transformative for UTI diagnosis -- reducing the associated illnesses and deaths and resulting in more tailored, appropriate antibiotic prescriptions. It's time to stop ignoring this disease of women and the elderly - relying on slow or inaccurate diagnostic tools is no longer acceptable.