Pockit Diagnostics, a startup on the Accelerate Cambridge programme at Cambridge Judge Business School, receives nearly £100,000 from SBRI award.
Pockit Diagnostics, a startup supported by Cambridge Judge Business School, received nearly £100,000 from the SBRI Healthcare Award to develop a rapid portable blood test for the detection of patients with severe stroke due to large artery blockage.
The Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) scheme helps the UK National Health Service (NHS) find solutions for healthcare problems, including competitions for businesses to address major unmet health needs.
SBRI Healthcare awarded a total of £800,000 to nine pioneering MedTech innovations in the field of Stroke and Technology, following a nationwide call in 2021 which attracted more than 79 applications. The competition focused on improving the quality of NHS services in the context of care provided to stroke patients and to ensure provision of support which will help patients manage their condition.
Pockit, founded in 2017, is currently on the Accelerate Cambridge programme run by the Entrepreneurship Centre at Cambridge Judge. Pockit was awarded £99,614 by the SBRI award.
There are 16 million cases of people suffering a stroke worldwide each year, including 100,000 cases in the UK. The startup’s innovation is the application of rapid detection of stroke-specific biomarkers to provide a diagnosis of stroke in less than 20 minutes. This allows individual treatment to be delivered earlier by getting the patient to the correct hospital or ward more quickly, with the potential to dramatically reduce stroke-induced disability and mortality.
“We are deeply honoured to receive this prestigious award. The funding will allow us to develop a simple and affordable device, with the aim of saving lives and improving outcomes for even more stroke sufferers through earlier diagnosis,” said Pockit co-founder and CEO Gonzalo Ladreda.
Having previously demonstrated 95% accuracy for large vessel occlusion (LVO) detection using laboratory assays, Pockit will now develop the first portable product, to be tested in NHS hospitals before commercialisation and distribution.