Truro based, Clinical Design Technologies, a business producing a new way for healthcare professionals to carry out urine testing, is the latest to receive funding from the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Investment Fund (CIOSIF).

Clinical Design has received a £750,000 CIOSIF equity investment as part of a £1.57 million fundraising round, which includes £400,000 from Sorbon Investments Ltd. The funding will support rollout of the product in the UK, alongside progression with overseas markets and will also allow the business to take on six new staff initially with further hires planned for next year.

Urine Testing System™ is an award-winning closed system for digital point-of-care urine testing for all healthcare providers including doctors’ surgeries, hospitals and care homes. As the world’s only closed system, Urine Testing System™ improves accuracy and enables semi-automatic desk-based analysis with the UTS Digital Analyser™. Urine Testing System™ has already been recognised as a significant innovation and earlier this year, it won a prestigious Red Dot Award for its intuitive design and potential to revolutionise one of the most common medical tests.

Having completed the design, development and robust testing of its system, the company is ready to move from trial stage into full-scale rollout.

Oliver Blackwell, Clinical Design Founder and CEO, said, “An estimated 100 million urine tests are carried out every year in the UK alone, many of which are still conducted with dipsticks that are colour-matched by eye. We have designed and engineered a digital solution that is easy-to-use and provides standardised results, which can be read on a desktop computer and saved to a patient’s electronic health care record.”

Mr Blackwell continues, “Securing funding at such a pivotal point can be tricky for early-stage med-tech companies like ours. We’re delighted to receive this backing which will be used to continue our UK rollout alongside entering overseas markets in Europe and preparing for expansion into the US in 2020.”

Ralph Singleton, Head of Funds, Cornwall at The FSE Group, commented: “Clinical Design has succeeded in creating a product that is not only superior to the existing solution but, crucially for the healthcare sector, is also cost neutral by comparison. This leaves them well placed to capture a significant portion of the almost 3 billion urine tests carried out globally each year and we are excited to be supporting such a dynamic team.”

John Acornley, chair of the CIOSIF Advisory Board and a non-executive director of the Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), said: “Once again CIOSIF is at the forefront of supporting real technological innovation in Cornwall whilst driving high quality job creation across the region. And with manufacturing of the product and associated software currently outsourced to St Austell and Redruth sub-contractors, this is positive news for the wider local economy.”

The £40m Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Investment Fund provides debt and equity finance from £25,000 to £2 million to help growing small businesses across the region. It has been established by the British Business Bank in partnership with the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly LEP and is operated by appointed fund manager, The FSE Group.

CIOSIF is supported financially by the European Union using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020.

For more information about the Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Investment Fund including how to apply, please visit www.ciosif.co.uk or follow the fund on Twitter at @CIOSIFBBB2