Team:Manchester/Human Practices/Industries
Industries
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FREDsense
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.
IBCarb
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.
Npronet
A few members of our team went to see the networking manager of NPronet, 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.
Manchester Enterprise
BioProNET
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)
Brightside Brewery
Carley from Brightside Brewery suggested that this tool might not be useful to the vanilla student audience of drinkers as there is a culture of drinking where people might not necessarily be interested in monitoring their alcohol consumption, although experiments with a working prototype would show if there is interest for them. Perhaps, if the patch was marketed towards certain themes which students might like, then maybe there would be more uptake, themes like cartoons or films etc. make it fun.
Carley suggested possible interest in the health sector, there could be people with undiagnosed health issues like violence which is triggered by consuming too much alcohol, a patch which monitors alcohol intake would help prevent violent situations perhaps. The NHS might use these patches as a part of education for people to know what the limit is so they best know how to drink responsibly. She mentioned that the police could get involved with alcohol awareness schemes and this patch might be a way to improve that.
We asked her whether she thought that breweries might find the patch useful and she said that they would have no use for them. Bars however, would have plenty of uses for them, but would they want to? It would not be in their interest to limit patron's consumption of alcohol. However, the patch could be used as a deterrent, for example difficult customers at bars who are drunk are told by bartenders that they cannot be served anymore. Quite often drunk people demand justification for being refused service, this patch could act as a back-up or justification tool for bartenders. This suggestion also conferred with what Dr Doherty (Meeting with IB Carb) suggested.
