We had a meeting with Dr.Doherty, the Network Manager of IBCarb. We pitched our project idea in order to get funding from IB Carb. She was very impressed with our project proposal and agreed to fund our project, enabling us to attend the Giant Jamboree. We also received many useful feedbacks from her, which were later used to improve certain aspects of our project. She also suggested that bouncers and bartenders would have great use of the AlcoPatch to measure the level of intoxication of consumers. This would help avoid the bartenders from selling alcohol to individuals who are very intoxicated.

We had a discussion with the networking manager of NPRONET (funded network in biotechnology and bioenergy), Ms Sarah Shephard. She was very forth coming of our project but advised us on getting our lab work done sooner due to the proof of concept element to our project. She also highlighted the issue of the AlcoPatch becoming a game amongst young adults, an issue which has been brought up by other individuals we have spoken to - Alcohol Academy and ESOF

Lynn Shepherd, the director of Manchester Enterprise Centre and Martin Henry asked us about how we intended for our patch to eventually be cheaper than current breathalysers and electric devices. We said that in order to get a more accurate account for costs of a prototype we would need to do further research into it, but we are not at that stage in our experimentation yet.

They also suggested we investigate whether what we were creating was novel or just a recalibration of existing designs. They suggested getting in contact with Curtis Dobson to ask if they could take a look at our models to understand the science behind them. They mentioned that we should be cautious about making too much of our product’s science available to the public as it could copied as we haven’t copyrighted anything yet. (meeting with Andrea Vero IP lawyer)

We also thought after the meeting that perhaps we could suggest that we could interchange chemicals with ethanol (in theory) like glucose (we did use glucose as pilot experiment). Which would mean that a patch could be designed to be easily interchangeable during manufacture to measure different chemicals in the sweat. Meaning a brand of patches which measure different chemicals could be created, which would standardise production to reduce production and design costs in the future. This model could become a business in itself and a cheap patch which can be made to measure different chemicals would be interest to many companies and corporations.

Two representatives of our team had a meeting with Professor Alan Dickinson (co director of BioProNET) and Dr Jo Flannelly ( network manager of BioProNET). They were very pleased with our project but also gave us an array of feedback for us to think about. Importantly they mentioned that ABTS is a carcinogenic substance. Therefore, the cell free mechanism couldn’t be marketed. Due to this, if we were to prolong the project we would look for a substance which acts in the same way as ABTS but isn’t harmful to the consumers of this product ( Our Safety Page).

They also made the point of financing the patch, is it really more cost effective than the breathalyzer and how much is the ptfe membrane we propose to use to enclose the reagents? Additionally, they suggested seeing an IP attorney in order to protect and patent our project. This was a new unexplored area of project that we hadn’t thought about yet. Therefore, we decided to contact an IP Attorney and get some more information about the legal process that could be involved with the production of our AlcoPatch. ( Ward Hadaway and Venner Shipley)