More than half of the hospital infections are caused by the use of medical devices such as catheters and implants. Boy, do I know. My oldest son got a serious infection when hospitalized and ended up at Intensive Care. Dutch nanotech-startup Lipocoat wants to fight these life-threatening bacterial infections in hospital environments and raised €600,000 in seed funding to do so.
Hospital infections
According to Lipocoat, hospital infections lead to more than 100,000 deaths per year in the US alone. “This exceeds the number of deaths caused by breast cancer and prostate cancer combined”, the University of Twente-incubated startup writes us. “Unfortunately, medical devices are easily contaminated with bacteria. Especially adhered bacteria cause severe infections and result in an increase in the use of antibiotics.”