Irish thermometer firm woos UK hospitals
THE Irish developers of a non-contact thermometer are hoping to persuade the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) hospitals to adopt their product.
Trimedika co-founders Roisin Molloy and Julie Brien have developed a product which uses infrared heat sensors to measure patients’ temperatures. Medical staff hold the device 3cm to 5cm away from a patient’s forehead in order to take a reading.
The thermometer has recently received the “CE mark” — meaning it can be traded in the European Economic Area — and was showcased by the duo in San Francisco at the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN).
Molloy told the Sunday Independent that the company would save the NHS money on the plastic caps used on a standard thermometer.
“We’ve got some costings for the NHS in England and they [the caps] cost the NHS about £80m a year... that puts that money back into the pot right away.” The makers are also pitching the product as a way to improve worker productivity as nurses don’t have to spend time fitting and disposing of the plastic caps.
Molloy said the business has just made it onto NHS England’s online supply portal as well as the tender framework in Northern Ireland.
Brien said the company’s distributors has just started marketing the product to hospitals.
“We would expect to see some purchasing beginning before Christmas,” she added.
Brien and Molloy set the business up in early 2016 and have received backing from two angel investors. The company’s team has 20 years’ experience in the manufacture and distribution of medical products in international clinical markets.
The duo met around five years ago working for a medical device company.
“Our job was to set up the international channels to market... we could see ways of doing it better and we both had I think a secret yearning to start up a business, start up something of our own. We saw an opportunity to go and do that, so we established Trimedika.
The Belfast-based company is now working on an internet-connected version of the device.