102337Rapid determination of negative blood culturesClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKSepsis (blood poisoning) now kills more people in the UK than lung cancer. Symptoms of sepsis can often be confused with other problems such as fever caused by cancer therapy. Because it still takes up to five days to diagnose sepsis in the hospital laboratory, patients at risk are put on expensive front-line antibiotics until the lab gives a result. This leads to extensive overtreatment as 90% of these patients turn out not to have sepsis. Momentum Bioscience has developed a test to reliably identify negative patients in one day. The grant proposal is to develop an automated system for the lab to run this test on all blood samples it receives from patients suspected of sepsis. This could save 4 days unnecessary treatment, reduce hospital costs and reduce the pressure on antibiotic resistance. The new system will be developed and evaluated in hospital studies before launching as a final product in the UK, mainland Europe and the rest of the world.