ShanX Medtech

Over 2.6 million patients with Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) were diagnosed by Dutch General Practitioners (GPs) in 2018. 14 % of these return due to incorrect antibiotic therapy. The current workflow for diagnosing UTIs is unreliable, and methods to determine the correct antibiotic treatment have a long turnaround time of over 2 days. We are simplifying this workflow by providing a reliable UTI diagnosis and simultaneously indicating the optimal antibiotic prescription in under 4 hours based on evidence provided by our device.

Our unique selling points are the fast time to result and broad applicability of our device to all common bacterial uropathogens. These stem from our soon-to-be-patented rapid phenotypic technology that can quickly and reliably detect bacterial growth in the presence of the antibiotics, indicating the inefficacy thereof.

After successful introduction into the UTI testing market, we will validate alternative antibiotic testing solutions; adapting our platform to enable the testing of other bacterial infections such as respiratory, skin, and blood infections. This aligns with our company’s chief objective to tackle injudicious antibiotic usage.

By helping GPs make informed treatment choices, we first and foremost help patients with a bacterial infection, we eliminate unnecessary antibiotic administration and thus reduce antibiotic resistance rates. The core team consists of CEO Sophia E. Shanko, a PhD candidate in high precision diagnostics and Ardjan van der Linden in the role of CSO, currently obtaining a PhD in the field of Chemical Biology. They are supported by key opinion leaders (e.g. Dr. Rogier Hopstaken – GP and Innovation Officer at Star Shl) and seasoned CEOs (e.g. Carmen van Vilsteren – Chair Top Sector Life Sciences & Health). The technological development is supported by a team of scientists and professors, most notably: Prof. Jaap den Toonder (TU Eindhoven).