Intelligent Fingerprinting, a British company developing the world’s first handheld fingerprint-based drug screening device, has secured GBP750,000 in funding from a consortium of private US-based investors.
The funding boost will be used to support the final stages in the development of the company’s non-invasive drug screening technology, which uses the Intelligent Fingerprinting analysis technique to screen for multiple drugs of abuse and provides results in less than ten minutes.
It follows an earlier investment of GBP2m from US backers in 2012. In the past 15 months Intelligent Fingerprinting has also secured almost GBP700,000 in government-funded grants.
Dr Jerry Walker, CEO of Intelligent Fingerprinting, says: “This additional funding is fantastic news as we enter the final phases of development. Allowing us to accelerate the device’s introduction to the global market, the investment will be used as working capital to fund late stage product development and to support investment in manufacturing. The ongoing support from investors validates our assertion that we have a technology with massive potential.”
The global market for drug screening was recently estimated to reach USD2.6bn in 2014, growing at approximately five per cent per year with the US alone accounting for more than 50 per cent of the global drug testing market.
In 2012 the company granted North American marketing and distribution rights in the criminal justice sector to Texas-based company Smart Start Inc.
The device is expected to go into pilot production in 2014.
