Award-winning entrepreneurs lead fight against anaemia

Anaemia leads to a reduction in haemoglobin, the protein molecule in red blood cells which carries oxygen from the lungs to the body’s tissues. It can manifest in a variety of ways – from tiredness and shortness of breath, to greater susceptibility to illness and even death in extreme cases.

There are several different types of anaemia, and the difficulty in identifying which type someone is suffering from means they are often prescribed the wrong treatment.

This was the situation Toby Fisher (now Dr Toby Fisher) alighted upon when he began researching haemoglobin as part of his PhD studies at Imperial College London.

Toby became interested in anaemia in particular, leading him to develop a method which would allow healthcare workers to measure haemoglobin and haematocrit. This in turn meant the cause of the anaemia could be identified, not just the condition itself.

He put together a prototype device – little more than a basic black box. But no sooner was it tested than it began returning gold standard data.

Securing funding from the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), Toby put together the team that would become Eva Diagnostics and together they began refining the device that would become AnemiPoint.

Spectrecom filmed with Toby and the Eva Diagnostics team (Jeff, Millie and Rob) earlier this year, as part of a four-part series of online videos for Imperial College London.

Each video in the series highlights a different piece of world-leading research to have benefitted from Imperial’s Impact Acceleration Fund. The fund helps the university’s academics to maximise the social and economic impact of their work.

For the Eva Diagnostics video, shoot director Dan Miles emphasised the youthful energy and optimism of Toby and his team – showcasing not just their outstanding research work, but also the invention which has allowed them to progress so far so fast.

That progress has included success in the prestigious OneStart competition, the largest worldwide contest for young bioscience entrepreneurs.

This secured £100,000 of further funding for Toby and his team – at the same time securing them the attentions of industry leaders like Dr Declan Jones, VP of Neuroscience at Johnson & Johnson’s Innovation Centre (who features in the video).

The Eva Diagnostics video is the fourth and final of the Impact Acceleration series. If you missed the previous three, you can also check out the videos for Professor Jianguo Lin (aluminium forming), Dr Roberto Trotta (astrostatistics) and Dr Mimi Hii and Professor Klaus Hellgardt (flow chemistry).

Spectrecom Films is one of the UK’s leading video production companies for higher education film and video content.

If you’ve got a video project you’re keen to speak to us about, get in touch with Kathy or Oliver, our account managers for universities.

Contact Oliver Knight on 0203 405 2271 / oliver.knight@spectrecom.co.uk or Kathy Bird on 0203 096 2866 / kathy.bird@spectrecom.co.uk