The ambition of IDAP is to support the rapid development of innovative technologies that can be introduced into the National Health Service (NHS) to address unmet clinical needs for patients and healthcare professionals at the earliest opportunity, without compromising on standards of safety, quality, and effectiveness.
Presymptom Health will join just seven other companies for The IDAP pilot – a joint project between the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, NICE, the MHRA, Health Technology Wales (HTW) and the Scottish Health Technology Group (SHTG). During the pilot they will receive non-financial support from a team of experts that will help them develop their technology, and navigate regulatory and access barriers across product development.
Presymptom’s participation in the IDAP program will be focused on its infection diagnostic test, which can be used at an early stage to rule out the presence of infection and enable clinicians to delay or eliminate antibiotic use.
Presymptom’s technology was developed by application of machine learning and AI analytics to derive insights from a unique presymptomatic 72,000-sample biobank generated during a novel 10-year UK study. This new test uses a technique called RNA-based host response analysis, which can find infections in your body by looking at how your cells react, even before you start feeling sick – providing an early warning signal of infection, regardless of the specific germ causing it. This transformative host-response approach is different from traditional methods that focus on identifying the specific germ causing the infection. These traditional methods take a long time to give results, aren’t always accurate, and are often unable to distinguish pathogens from harmless microbial species. Because of these limitations, doctors may not know if an infection is present and how severe it may become. As a result, they may wrongly prescribe antibiotics – an issue that compounds AMR.
Presymptom Health’s technology helps solve this problem by providing early and reliable information about infection status in patients with non-specific symptoms, helping doctors make better treatment decisions. The test can be run on ubiquitous NHS PCR platforms, which were widely deployed during the COVID pandemic and are now often under-utilised.
