Handheld medical device works with blood testing assays to detect heart attacks and more in minutes

A modern marvel in emerging healthcare technology, the Minicare I-20 is a handheld medical device developed by Philips that can quickly, and early on, determine whether a patient is having a heart attack. Largely used during emergency situations, it provides results in as little as 10 minutes, whereas standard hospital lab testing often takes significantly longer. "Blood samples are usually analyzed in the hospital laboratory, which can easily take more than an hour to get the result back to the ED physician," says Dr. Paul Collinson, consultant chemical pathologist at St. George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in the U.K. “Point-of-care testing can significantly help to reduce the turnaround time.” The Minicare I-20 uses assays that employ Philips’ Magnotech biosensor technology to detect heart attacks in moments. The medical device and biological product technology measures the patient’s level of Cardiac Troponin (cTnI), a protein which the heart releases during a heart attack. By identifying the amount of this protein in patients, physicians are able to determine if the patient is or was experiencing a heart attack, and if the patient needs urgent care. The Minicare I-20 system consists of a handheld analyzer, dedicated software, and a single-use disposable cartridge containing an application specific assay that works with as little as a finger prick of blood, and do not require quality control which makes the medical device and biologic system ideal for use in hospitals where funds and resources are tightly controlled. Better still for patients, medical practitioners, and those who manage provider budgets, the Minicare I-20 has multiple blood testing capabilities and can use any of a variety of promising assay cartridges that are being developed to detect certain hormones, drugs, and proteins, providing more opportunities for point-of-care testing. Accurate and timely point-of care testing for heart attacks could be the difference between life and death for hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S., alone. According to the American Heart Association, 2014 saw about 356,500 people who experienced out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the U.S., and about 209,000 who experienced in-patient cardiac arrest. Worse still are the survival rates, which sat at a measly 12 percent for cardiac arrest patients treated by emergency medical services, and 38.6 percent of bystander-witnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in 2014. Medical devices are becoming smaller, more portable and faster. And this technology takes another step in the right direction by tackling one of the biggest problems in healthcare; time, or lack thereof. The Minicare I-20 system is the latest point-of-care innovation from Philips and it has foregone extensive testing in real-life settings with the European Lab2Go project and has shown that the system can measure cTnI values of blood components quickly, accurately, and efficiently. Philips is leading the way with their industry changing medical devices and biological products like this one and others that can test patients for concussions and neuropsychiatric disorders. The Minicare I-20 is being introduced in the UK, Germany and Netherlands, but unfortunately it is not yet available in the U.S. Still, you can bet that online medical device and biologics retailers such as BioMarketplace.com will keep an eye on groundbreaking technology like the Minicare I-20.