Premaitha propels prenatal test into Indian market

Premaitha Health was propelling its IONA prenatal testing product into one of the world's largest markets on Wednesday, announcing its partnership with Visional Medical.

The AIM-traded medical technology firm described Visional as a new organisation based in the UK and India, with a goal of delivering better diagnostic tests to the developing world.

Visional will provide pregnant women in India access to the IONA test, which Premaitha developed as the first CE-marked non-invasive prenatal screening product, to safely and accurately estimate the risk of a fetus being affected by serious genetic disorders.

The IONA test only requires a sample of maternal blood, Premaitha said, to analyse cell-free fetal DNA and provide a result.

Blood samples from pregnant women in India would be collected by Visional Medical and sent to Premaitha's laboratory in Manchester where they would be analysed, with the results being sent directly back to healthcare professionals in India.

"The potential market for non-invasive prenatal testing in India is huge - there are millions of pregnancies every year, and currently little provision of any prenatal screening", said Premaitha CEO Dr Stephen Little.

"Our partnership with Visional Medical will provide a risk-free, rapid and reliable prenatal screening test to address this unmet medical need", he added.

Dr Colin Ferrett, CEO of Visional Medical, said he was thrilled to be working with Premaitha.

"We look forward to offering this advanced, yet simple screening test to improve prenatal prpvision to the large population of pregnant mothers in India", he said.

"Visional Medical's mission is to work with cutting edge diagnostic tools to advance healthcare into the 21st century for the developing world", Ferrett continued.