UK invests £1m in infectious agents projects

The UK government (via the Technology Strategy Board) has announced that it will invest £1 million into three major projects to enable them to develop new and improved health-economics tools or products that will assist and improve the design and evaluation of diagnostic clinical trials for infectious agents. One of the stated aims of the project is to reduce the economic burden, death and illness due to infectious agents. Iain Gray, Chief Executive of the Technology Strategy Board, says on the wesbite: “Supporting innovation in healthcare is a priority for the Technology Strategy Board. Through these contracts we look forward to seeing the development of new and improved health- economics modelling tools that will help companies and organisations design and evaluate diagnostic clinical trials. We hope these new tools will lead to better adoption of diagnostic products by providing assessors and decision-makers with high-quality data on their impact.” Two of the projects, to be undertaken by Diagnostics for the Real World and the Health Protection Agency, will focus on sexually transmitted infections, while the Integrated Medicines Ltd project will focus on sepsis