Member Article

North West medical manufacturer receives £550,000 investment

A manufacturer of specialist heart treatment equipment has secured £550,000 investment from The North West Fund for Biomedical.

Macclesfield-based Dot Medical Ltd means the company will be able to expand the number of centres treating Atrial Fibrillation (AF), a heart condition that causes an irregular, and often abnormally fast heart rate.

Managing director, Ian Rankin, said: “From a business perspective it will mean that Dot Medical will be able to expand globally from its current European base to China and India and ultimately the USA.”

AF can be treated in hospital with an internal heart-shocking procedure called ‘internal cardioversion’; a process that involves threading a catheter into a vein in the leg and pushing it to the correct position in the heart where an electric shock is given to restore the natural heart rhythm.

Dot Medical already supplies the NHS with its ‘Alert Internal Cardioversion System’ which includes the ‘Alert’ catheter.

The funding, managed by SPARK impact, will be used to develop and manufacture equipment for delivering energy to the ‘Alert’ catheter.

Dr Penny Attridge, senior investment director at SPARK Impact, said: “Of the 1.5m people affected by AF, only 18 per cent receive any treatment for their condition.

“It’s worrying as having AF can increase the risk of suffering a stroke by nearly 500 per cent. This is why it’s so important to invest in a business that is doing so much to help people with such a common medical affliction.”

Earlier this year, SPARK Impact invested £50,000 into Rapid Rhythm Ltd, a hand-held device that uses Electro Cardio Graph (ECG) data to diagnose AF.

The North West Fund for Biomedical is a sub-fund of The North West Fund, a substantial pot of money jointly financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the European Investment Bank.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .