There were four areas of focus for the Phase 1 investigation into new markets.
1. Academic Microbiology
There was considerable interest amongst academic microbiologists for a system of this nature for essentially the same reason as SI has received good feedback for pathology and anatomy uses. The issues of speed, cost, flexibility and ease of use were very well received by academic staff and students who currently have to make these measures.
2. Commercial Microbiology
The findings in commercial areas were more complex. Large-scale biotechnological showed little interest in our solution, due to the fact that they are the market targets of the large, high cost systems already available and therefore didn’t see the need for a system such as SI. In contrast, smaller groups such as start-ups and CRO’s showed some interest due to its flexible, low-cost and quantitative nature. Also there was some interest in companies utilising bioreactors, as there is a significant issue with qualitative review of samples prior to large-scale growth being unsatisfactory, but no current quantitative fast system was available.
3. Medical Microbiology
Medical staff were almost universal in reporting that microscopy made up a tiny fraction of diagnostic methods in the modern biomedical laboratory, and that new techniques were steadily removing even these small uses.
It seems that nuclear magnetic resonance is the key developing technology for identification of viral coat proteins, and therefore critical in diagnosis of viral infections. Whereas genetic screening, involving bacterial plasmid sequencing and genomic marker identification, is the area of favoured development to identify bacterial infections. The figure that was reported by several diagnostic microbiologists was that “less than 5% of our work is down a microscope”, which is declining year-on-year.
4. Diagnostic Andrology
Customer discovery amongst andrologists has revealed clear gaps in diagnosis methods. The current inability of andrologists to make accurate, evidence-based assessments of sperm morphology means that patients suffering from infertility must go through a long series of treatments until one succeeds. This process is inefficient, costly and traumatic, leading to many dropping out of treatment. Whilst early stage customer discovery has revealed this need, we would develop the base technology of SI to optimise for human make fertility diagnosis to allow fast, quantified assessment of spermatozoa biology, as well as the appropriate pricing level and method. We have obtained formal support from the UK national andrology body and collaborations with several UK centres of excellence for this project.
Evidently the optimal beachhead market for microbiology is a similar one to pathology, that is UK-based academic hands-on users 18-35yo. From this we could expand towards the same user groups internationally. From this there may be vertical adoption by senior staff or institutions, but the reluctance of senior staff to commit in interviews makes this hard to judge. For here a more measured approach to larger-scale adoption by institutions and commercial users would be more profitable.
