Under the radar: tackling the forgotten disease in our midst

我是艾玛·海赫斯特，Llusern Science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的时候得到正确的诊断。我们研制了一种新型的可用于新冠肺炎诊断的分子诊断检测装置。我想利用这个创新奖来帮助我们开发一种诊断尿路感染(UTIs)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--90%以上的患者是女性。任何患有尿路感染的人(超过50%的女性都会有这样的经历)都会告诉你，即使是不复杂的尿路感染也会导致严重的疼痛和不适，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。由于尿路感染的诊断被忽视了很长时间，治疗往往基于模糊或不准确的诊断工具，这意味着开出的数百万抗生素治疗尿路感染是不必要的或不合适的。这有助于抗生素耐药性的传播。我们的测试将帮助解决这个问题，告诉全科医生是否有人患有尿路感染，以及是什么细菌导致了尿路感染，从而能够做出更好的治疗决定。我们的UTI测试便携、快速(从样品到结果只需30分钟)、价格实惠且易于使用--不需要样品处理，用户只需不到一小时的培训就能进行诊断测试。该项目将使Llusern能够在大量真实的临床样本上评估我们的UTI测试，并测试市场，找出最需要我们产品的地方，并获得更多资金，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--减少相关的疾病和死亡，并产生更定制、更合适的抗生素处方。现在是时候停止忽视这种妇女和老年人的疾病了--依靠缓慢或不准确的诊断工具不再是可以接受的。

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.