NETPark businesses to deliver revolutionary healthcare savings

An innovative healthcare supplier and a cutting-edge electronics firm are collaborating on a new product which could potentially save Britain’s national health service (NHS) £250m a year.

Quality Hospital Solutions (QHS) and PragmatIC, both based at the North East Technology Park (NETPark) in County Durham, are working together on SamplePod – an innovative tracking and transport system for pathology samples.

Inventor and Managing Director of QHS, Andrew Turner, designed SamplePod after a large regional Pathology lab told him they were looking for a more efficient way of transporting their samples. Hospitals and clinics receive thousands of samples per day for analysis into their pathology departments, with the samples arriving in many different types and sizes of tubes.

Transporting and processing these samples can be inefficient, as the current system involves packing specimens into several individual plastic bags along with paper request forms. This system uses a tremendous amount of non-recyclable packaging, due to strict regulations in the healthcare industry. Andrew’s innovative product, SamplePod, will remove more than five tonnes of waste from one pathology lab alone.

Andrew Turner said: “SamplePod holds every possible sample size securely and within one pod and can be used time and time again. By eliminating the use of plastic bags and paper request forms it removes more than five tonnes of waste from the process. It is set to revolutionise the way pathology samples are taken, transported and traced worldwide and could potentially reduce NHS costs by £250m per year.”

The company has teamed up with innovative electronics firm PragmatIC to develop the tracking element of SamplePod using radio frequency identification (RFID).  PragmatIC’s flexible integrated circuit technology allows ultra-low cost RFID to be added to every sample tube, giving each one a unique digital identity that can be read wirelessly. The individual sample IDs are locked to the master RFID chip within the SamplePod itself.

Andrew added: “Business Durham has been instrumental in helping us to bring SamplePod to market, as they knew we were looking for a company to produce a low cost electronic tag and they introduced us to PragmatIC. Due to its good insight of the innovative businesses within NETPark we have teamed up with another business who shares our revolutionary ethos.”

CEO of PragmatIC, Scott White, said: “Our unique flexible integrated circuit technology is being adopted in a wide variety of novel applications, so strong partnerships are essential to enable the delivery of complete solutions. The collaboration with QHS is particularly exciting, set to save money for the NHS while simultaneously improving health outcomes. It’s been fantastic to see the support from NETPark and Business Durham in making this happen.”

NETPark manager Janet Todd said: “NETPark is the perfect environment for innovative businesses such as QHS and PragmatIC. We provide a dynamic, supportive and collaborative environment to help businesses grow and thrive, and it’s fantastic to be able to introduce companies who can benefit each other. The joint initiative between QHS and PragmatIC reflects the collaborative campus culture at NETPark and we’re excited to see what the future holds for SamplePod.”

To read more about IASP member NETPark, please visit https://www.northeasttechnologypark.com/.