A digital point-of-care urine test has won the top distinction in this year’s iF Design Award.

Developed by UK based Clinical Design, Urine Testing System was awarded the iF gold award. From 7,298 submissions, only 75 were awarded the gold by the independent iF jury.

The system also secured its place in Top 10 of all UK winners (2016-2020) – and in the Top 25 of all winners in the Health/Medical category (2016-2020).

The iF Design Award is run by the world’s oldest design organisation, iF International Forum, based in Hannover, Germany.

Jurors called the device a “well thought-out solution” – picking up on its ease of use highlighting that, “The user interface is ingeniously simple and efficient.”

Oliver Blackwell, CEO of Clinical Design, said “Winning the iF Gold Award and making it into the Top 10 of all UK and Top 25 of all Health and Medical winners (2016-2020) is a moment to celebrate for the whole team. Urine Testing System was not created from a spark of inspiration, but as a result of hundreds of conversations with doctors, nurses and other stakeholders – the first being ten years ago. It’s great to be recognised by peers and an expert jury.”

Globally, it is estimated that 2.8 billion point-of-care urine tests are carried out for things such as the diagnoses of acute infections, monitoring kidney and liver disease, as well as diabetes.

The current test takes approximately one to two minutes and risks include spillage of a contaminated sample, as well as human errors during analysis and/or the manual recording into a patient's records. 

Urine Testing System aims to improve accuracy and bases decisions on digitally calibrated urine test results for 10 parameters. Standardised results can be read on the UTS Digital Analyser – or on a desktop computer and saved to a patient’s electronic health record.

Engineered with no moving parts, the highly intuitive device is low maintenance and provides an affordable digital solution for all healthcare providers. It is easy to use with minimal training required and early testing shows that Urine Testing System transfers data and reduces transcription variants to improve consistency for auditing.

The system has been tested and verified at the Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Foundation Trust Pathology Laboratory.

In 2019, Urine Testing System also won the Red Dot Design award.