Novel solution to facilitate streamlined home based care for cancer patients

提交这项申请的申请人已经开发出一种新型的医疗诊断技术，它能够使用小型激光、特殊类型的摄像头和智能软件的组合来测量患者血液样本中非常精确的光学信号。这种非常精确的光学信号或“光学指纹”是一种非常强大的方法，因为它使患者的血液中经常能够检测到非常复杂的疾病。至关重要的是，与大多数现有的诊断系统相比，这种方法是一个重大优势，大多数现有的诊断机器依赖于将特定的化学物质添加到血液中，并在多个步骤中对血液进行处理，以使化学物质能够检测和测量感兴趣的疾病(或生物标志物)。添加这些化学物质和运行测试的过程为现有的医疗诊断产品增加了显著的成本和复杂性。iLoF的诊断技术不需要复杂和昂贵的化学标签或许多工艺步骤。这项技术基于对血液样本进行直接测量(即光学指纹)，是新一代廉价、方便和有效的血液检测产品的基础。iLoF开发了这种诊断系统的一个版本，以提高痴呆症患者诊断阿尔茨海默病的易用性和简单性。该产品目前处于高级临床研究阶段。癌症专家已经与iLoF接洽，他们有兴趣了解iLoF平台是否可以用于改善卵巢癌女性患者的治疗和管理方式。该平台有可能在办公室、家庭或远程环境中提供非常快速和简单的测试，为医疗保健专业人员和患者提供关于他们的癌症状况和治疗途径的重要确认。ILoF正在寻求快速启动创新资金，以了解在卵巢癌诊断市场使用该技术的可行性。这个项目与快速启动创新大赛特别相关，因为它将光子学、人工智能、计算、生物信息学结合到一个项目中，使女性能够自我管理并呈现未来的癌症。

The applicants presenting this application have developed a new type of medical diagnostic technology that is able to use a combination of a small laser, special type of camera and intelligent software to measure a very precise optical signal from a patient's blood sample. This very precise optical signal or "optical fingerprint" is a very powerful method as it enables often very complex diseases to be detected in a patient's blood. Crucially, this approach is a major advantage over most existing diagnostic systems, the majority of existing diagnostic machines are reliant on adding specific chemicals to the blood and processing the blood in a number of steps to enable the chemical to detect and measure the disease (or biomarker) of interest. Adding these chemicals and the process of running the test add significant costs and complexity to existing medical diagnostic products.iLoF's diagnostic technology does not require complex and costly chemical labels or lots of process steps. The technology is based on making a direct measurement (i.e. the optical fingerprint) of the blood sample and is the basis for a new generation of cheap, convenient and effective blood testing products.iLoF has developed a version of this diagnostic system to improve the ease and simplicity of diagnosing Alzheimer Disease in people with dementia. This product is in advanced clinical studies at present.iLoF has been approached by cancer specialists, they are interested to understand if the iLoF platform can be used to improve how women with ovarian cancer are treated and managed. The platform has the potential to provide a very quick and simple test in an office, home or remote setting to provide the healthcare professional and patient with important confirmation about the status of their cancer and treatment pathway. iLoF is seeking Fast Start Innovation funding to be able to understand the feasibility of using the technology in the ovarian cancer diagnostic market. This project is particularly relevant to the Fast Start Innovation competition because is combines, photonics, AI, computing, bioinformatics into one project enable women to ovarian cancer to self-manage and present future cancers.