Vail Scientific, which empowers healthcare providers with cutting-edge solutions for early sepsis screening, has unveiled the significant new design of its proprietary VSNO™ sepsis screening device, which is used for speeding sepsis testing and results for enhanced patient outcomes. Sepsis is a life-threatening complication from infections that damages and causes the body’s organs to fail, especially when it is not detected and treated early. It is the leading cause of death in hospitals and overall cost of hospitalization at an estimated $62 billion. One in three patients who die in a hospital have sepsis.
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 easy-to-use 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.
“We applied a Design-For-Manufacturing mindset to determine how VSNO can be most efficiently produced and scaled to meet the expected market demand,” said Kera West, engineering director at Minnetronix Medical. “Sepsis hasn’t seen innovation in more than a decade. This is such purpose-driven work, and we can’t wait for the new standard-setting sepsis testing process to be in the market.”
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.
“With sepsis, speed and accuracy can help save lives,” said Tom Burke, CEO of Vail Scientific. “The Minnetronix team helped make our technology viable in a device designed for use at the triage stage of a patient workflow. They understood the science and brought their integrated electronics, hardware, and software expertise to the challenge of making VSNO into a better way to address the global issue of sepsis.”
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.
About Vail Scientific
Vail Scientific was established by four founders with over eight decades of combined industry experience in medtech and healthcare. The company is pioneering the development of VSNO™ sepsis screening technology that will by provide a rapid, non-invasive additional screen at the point of care, helping healthcare providers treat patients more quickly and effectively.
About Minnetronix Medical
For 30 years, Minnetronix Medical has accelerated medical device breakthroughs as a design, development, and manufacturing partner to leading device companies around the world. Today, through full lifecycle support, flexible product entry points, and seamless integration, the company creates value in key technology segments that include optical systems, surgical energy, fluid and gas management, stimulation and active wearables. From standalone design and development services to scaled manufacturing, Minnetronix has the expansive industry insight and focused technical experience to deliver better medical devices to market, faster.
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