Testing portal has now facilitated the processing of more than 1.2 million tests

Healthcare software entrepreneurs Clive Minihan and Andrew Halliday have had a busy 16 months. Predicting that the need to process Covid tests at scale would require the process to be digitised, the pair formed the startup Recova-19 in May 2020. Their testing portal has now facilitated the processing of more than 1.2 million tests with a team that has now grown to 10. The cloud-based SaaS platform application has proved so successful that the duo now plan to use it to further support resilience in the health care system in the crucial areas of point of care testing and remote diagnostics with a new venture, called Personalised Diagnostics Limited (PDX).

It is intended that the new technology will be available to improve the ease of data collection and processing in clinical trials, innovative point of care diagnostic products and, building on the company founders’ existing strong connections with pharmacies and laboratories, personal genetic based tests in oncology, fertility and gastric health.

The platform has been some time in the making, being originally designed in 2012 to allow remote data collection and diagnosis for the NHS and was successfully adopted in Dermatology and Sexual Health by NHS Wales.

Last spring the pair quickly recognised that the platform’s ability to gather data remotely, store it securely, and deliver results electronically would be crucial in dealing with Covid testing. Fifteen months on, the company’s software is used by two of the top three high street pharmacy chains, employers such as Cambridge University, and most of the UK’s UKAS accredited laboratories.

The company sends all Covid testing results to Public Health England every morning. The portal has also recently been launched in Ireland. Clive says, “The success of the portal is based on Andrew’s total commitment that software has to work, be user friendly, and be constructed using agile methodology to enable adaptation for customer needs in an accelerated timeframe.”

The advantages to the labs using the Recova software is captured by Dr. Tony Cooke, Chief Executive of Cambridge Clinical Laboratories; “Using the Recova portal has transformed the time and potential mistakes in transcribing test details; we simply check samples in using a barcode scanner and upload the results from our Laboratory Information Management System once processing is complete. The simplicity of the process, plus the added bonus of using the Recova software to facilitate our reporting to PHE, allows us to focus on what we do best – processing clinical samples. Without Recova we could not have successfully scaled our operations to cope with Covid as we have.”

As the UK starts to emerge from this pandemic, some big key questions remain to be resolved: how will the NHS grapple with the huge diagnosis and treatment backlog that has built up and will the NHS be more open to how new technologies might assist in that struggle? In AlbionVC’s Health Tech Primer for Europe,* published this year, Christoph Ruedig, Partner at Albion VC is quoted as saying, “Faced with an existential crisis brought about by the acute strain on providers from Covid-19, the entire industry had to learn how to do things differently almost overnight. And it learned pretty quickly that technology holds the key to overcoming many of the challenges posed by the crisis. The beneficiaries have again been technology vendors, in particular those that help move activities that traditionally happened face-to-face to remote.”

Additionally, given the concerns around the inevitable delay in addressing the backlog, individuals may be more willing to manage their healthcare privately through accessing clinical testing in the private market and accessing their own data in a secure and confidential portal under their own control. These are all areas that Clive and Andrew, are keen to explore and they are currently in discussion with clinical researchers, healthcare professionals and laboratories for whom remote data capture and reporting is crucial.

Clive concludes, “With a million results behind us, we’ve shown our technology can reach scale and. with Personalised Diagnostics we aim to transform outcomes in healthcare for the future. It’s a really exciting prospect for everyone.”

About Personalised Diagnostics Ltd

PD2X was set up by a team of professionals with over 120 years combined experience maximising the use of IT technology in improving the effectiveness of clinical systems and processes.

The company’s founding partners are Clive Minihan and Andrew Halliday.

Clive Minihan

A Harvard Business School graduate and mentor to the NHS England Clinical Entrepreneurs Programme Clive recently Set up Recova-19, a software and testing solution to help employers and teaching institutions manage the risk of Covid-19 within the workplace and place of learning, to make employee and student testing and monitoring safe, efficient and reliable.

Andrew Halliday

Andrew studied Zoology at the University of Leeds and has a Master’s Degree in Biology from Manchester University. He went on to become Chief Technology Officer at Signum Health, IT Project Manager with ETJAM Limited and co-founded 3 Wise Monkeys, a company that helps to safeguard travelers against the hazards of diseases they would not normally encounter at home. He is a Director and co-founder of ReCoVa-19 with Clive Minihan.