Education and debate

Inventing a new diagnostic test for vaginal infection

Department of Community Health and General Practice, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Republic of Ireland University of Wales College of Cardiff, Cardiff CF1 3XA.

Bacterial vaginosis, which is underdiagnosed in clinical practice, has a characteristic fishy smell because of production of diamines. This smell is the basis of a visual rapid diagnostic test that is technically simple to perform. The test has been patented in Europe and America, and a licence agreement has been negotiated. This paper describes the process from idea to invention to patenting and licensing. The combined costs of research and patenting were met by a multinational company in return for rights to exploit the patented invention. The process has taken nine years and has needed clinical, scientific, legal, and commercial input to get the test to the marketplace.

About 5000 patents a year are registered by British inventors, but the Japanese company Hitachi registers 20 000 patents a year. Yet Japanese research shows that in the past few decades half the economically valuable inventions around the world originated . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    StumbleUpon    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

New diagnostic test for vaginal infection

S C Arya
BMJ 1994 309: 807. [Extract] [Full Text]

Inventing a new diagnostic test

P Sonksen, T O'Dowd, and N Bourne
BMJ 1994 309: 540-541. [Extract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Arya, S C (1994). New diagnostic test for vaginal infection. BMJ 309: 807-807 [Full text]  
• Sonksen, P, O'Dowd, T, Bourne, N (1994). Inventing a new diagnostic test. BMJ 309: 540b-541 [Full text]