We had a conversation with a representative from FREDsense, Mr David Lloyd. He answered our questions relating to alcohol trends in Canada, the drinking culture and whether our AlcoPatch might be of interest to Canada’s public.

Mr Lloyd talked about how drink driving in Canada is a big issue and that methods of measuring alcohol levels in people’s blood can often have big influence on legal cases. Any tool which can accurately read out someone’s blood ethanol concentration would be useful. However, these tests would need to be very quick as it would be impractical to have to wait for 10-30 minutes for an accurate reading. This is one of the reasons why, throughout our project we have tried to explore to different mechanisms with their own advantages and disadvantages relating to time and accuracy.

Due to genetically modified organism concerns, we discussed Mechanism 2 and how GMO products are faced with great scrutiny and resistance by the public as they are generally considered to be dangerous. Although, it may be received with open arms depending on how the public perceive it. Mechanism 1 , however, doesn’t contain GMO so it maybe more acceptable for the public - however hazardous chemicals also pose challenges.

We met up with a representative from IB carb, Dr.Doherty. We sat down and made a pitch about the project in order to get funding from IB Carb. We got some positive feedback from her. In terms of application for our patch she suggested that we could give them to bouncers or bar staff to measure the intoxication of consumers. This would help avoid staff giving customers alcohol which would put them over the limit to drink drive. She suggested writing a formal letter to IB carb asking for funding, this was critical as this letter we wrote did secure us funding for our project.