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Innovative diagnostic technology company takes gold and £50,000

June 06, 2003

In a nail biting finale to the Academy Awards Dinner last night, Randox Laboratories Ltd of Northern Ireland took the 2003 MacRobert Award gold medal and £50,000.

At the glamorous event filled with royalty, decorations, the awarding of other Academy medals, corporate high flyers and top engineers, the four finalist companies had to wait it out until the coffee was served to find out who had taken the prize. HRH The Duke of Edinburgh presented the Randox team with the Award.

The other finalists were Rolls-Royce plc for its short take-off, vertical landing propulsion system; FT Technologies Ltd for an acoustic resonant anemometer; and, Oxford Instruments (Superconductivity) for a 900MHz NMR superconducting magnet.

The Randox vision is to 'develop a complete diagnostic system that will provide more accurate patient diagnosis and enable selection of the most appropriate therapeutic treatment on an individual patient basis.'

Randox Laboratories Ltd developed a fully automated diagnostic analyser (Evidence®) using protein biochip array technology. The technology enables the simultaneous detection and quantification of multiple proteins and other compounds to be detected in clinical samples on a single biochip using a fully automated analyser.

This means that the fully automated analyser, the size of a large photocopier, performs a greater number and variety of diagnostic tests per patient sample simultaneously, thereby using less amounts of a blood, serum or plasma. In addition, results not initially reported can be reported retrospectively reducing hospital referrals and reanalysis of the sample. Increasing the variety of tests performed simultaneously can disclose possible disease relationships not readily apparent when less numbers of tests are performed. At present, more than 3500 tests per hour can be analysed on drug residues, thyroid, fertility, tumour, cardiac, allergens and others, conventional methods can only perform just over 200 tests in an hour. All of this allows for speedier processing of tests for more patients - a great cost saving process for both public and private healthcare facilities.

The uniquely designed biochip is the first commercially available diagnostic protein biochip in the world, which has been created in a highly automated cleanroom manufacturing facility, the first of its kind that can produce over 20 million biochips per year.

The finalist team is made up of Dr Peter Fitzgerald, managing director, Mr John Lamont, R&D manager, and Mr Ivan McConnell, divisional R&D manager of biochip research, manufacture and instrument design.

After receiving the coveted medal and prize money, John Lamont, Research and Design Manager said, "The MacRobert Award is the most prestigious Engineering Award in the UK. Becoming the winner is a major morale boost to the multi-disciplinary team of Randox scientists and engineers - motivating them to make further innovations and developments. It is recognition of our innovative research programme and our ability to successfully develop and commercialist our innovative ideas."

Randox has successfully negotiated contracts worldwide with private laboratories and public hospitals to the value of £25 million over the next three years. They have submitted over thirty patents on this technology and its supporting infrastructure with seven being granted to date.

Royal Academy of Engineering