Vail Scientific has unveiled the new design of its proprietary VSNO sepsis screening device, which is used for speeding sepsis testing and results for enhanced patient outcomes.
Vail partnered with Minnetronix on the device design after successful proof of concept and feasibility trials for its core technology, which measures sepsis down to single parts per billion. Minnetronix streamlined the device to increase its useability and portability. After a 75 percent reduction in size, the VSNO can now be mounted on an IV pole. It features a new handle that a patient holds to blow into a breath analyzer that measures nitric oxide levels and, in the VSNO system, serves as a screening tool in the detection of sepsis.
Minnetronix’s team provided Vail and its investors with a reliable project timeline and unit cost for the manufactured device, to support the product launch and commercialization planning. To date, Minnetronix has manufactured a limited number of newly designed devices for a VSNO verification study planned for 2025, which will be followed by a final definitive clinical trial and FDA clearance application.
Unlike standard sepsis tests, VSNO does not require a blood draw and is planned for use at the triage stage, including before a patient enters the hospital. It streamlines the testing process and reduces time to results from approximately eight hours (the time the patient arrives at the hospital to results) to less than two minutes after a patient blows into the device.
Every hour before treatment, a patient’s chance of dying from sepsis increases by eight percent. GlobalData epidemiologists using Sepsis-3 criteria recently forecasted that diagnosed incident cases of sepsis in the eight major global markets will grow from approximately 7.8 million cases in 2024 to 9.5 million cases in 2033. Sepsis is the leading cause of deaths inside hospitals yet as many as 80 percent of sepsis deaths can be avoided with rapid diagnosis and treatment.
