Heartfelt innovation for emergency care

"It’s a pretty cool technology!" As she speaks those words, her posture becomes even a bit more upright. De Theije flashes a broad smile and it’s clear she's very proud of what she and her team have accomplished.You can't help but smile a little yourself – de Theije's enthusiasm is contagious.

We're in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, in the middle of the local High Tech Campus. Our goal is to learn how de Theije and team plan to revolutionize emergency care – with a handheld device that fits in the pockets of the emergency teams’ scrubs.

“Our device can help to determine if someone is having a heart attack, in just eight minutes and with a fingerstick of blood,” says de Theije. Traditionally, to get results that help doctors make a diagnosis you need an actual lab, a much larger blood sample collected via a venous blood draw and, well … time. It typically takes up to an hour to get the first lab results to find out if the patient who presented symptoms of a heart attack in the emergency department actually has one. 

One hour vs. eight minutes – this is how it compares in detail:

The usage of the handheld device that gives test results in eight minutes could relieve a lot of stress for everyone involved: 

• Patients don’t have to wait long for the results of their medical test and could get the right treatment faster, which increases their chances for recovery. 
• Doctors can immediately act on the test result. In the case of a heart attack, every minute counts when it comes to limiting the damage to the heart muscle. 
• The emergency care team can more quickly determine the people who need immediate medical attention from those who are not. 
• The central lab team can focus on running the other medical tests that require the lab’s infrastructure and resources, while still being able to track the decentralized testing via the handheld devices in their central information system. 

The simplified testing process and accelerated turnaround time from test to result also holds the potential to help address overcrowding in emergency departments, particularly in countries like the U.S., where it's a pressing issue.

De Theije has always been driven by her desire to do things that can substantially make a difference in people's lives. And “Follow your heart!” has become something like her mantra. She firmly believes that if your work doesn't ignite your passion, it's time for a change. 

And she has taken her own advice: de Theije started out studying dentistry, because she always knew that in her job, she wanted to “make something better". But after “two years and one week”, she knew that taking care of people’s teeth was not for her: “I thought this is so boring, if I have to do this for the rest of my life, I’ll be miserable.”

“I considered biology – but that was a bit too vague for me. So it was between math, physics and chemistry. And in chemistry they had the best atmosphere, so I joined them,” she says laughing. She also loves a challenge and finding things out herself. And for that, chemistry was a perfect match: A field so broad and varied that there was plenty to discover. She ended up doing her PhD in surface chemistry because she was drawn to the creative process of unraveling complex mechanisms: “That’s fulfilling for me because in the end, you really understand something. I like putting all those little pieces together to finish the puzzle.”

When it comes to the technology, the team also had a puzzle to solve: Making a point-of-care device that can run a high-sensitivity troponin I test as well as a lab can. And that’s not easy: “Because the lab devices are getting better and better, so you have to compete with something that’s also improving constantly,” says de Theije. Traditional technologies turned out to be either too expensive to make or just not sensitive enough to measure troponin at lab quality. 

So the team kept on searching for their missing puzzle piece. It turned out to be magnetism: "We are using magnetic nanoparticles that bind to troponin," explains de Theije. "By using magnetic forces, we draw those particles towards the surface where they can bind. The amount of bound particles on the surface is a measure for the troponin concentration in the blood sample." And this is how it works in detail: 

Inside Atellica VTLi – a fly-through

With over two decades of experience in biosensors, de Theije still enjoys diving into the intricacies of technology with her colleagues. In her current job, she acts more like a catalyst for collaboration: “I love bringing everyone together to create something useful – while having fun,” she says. As head of the R&D department for emergency care, her main goal is to get the device, called Atellica VTLi, in the hands of emergency care teams worldwide: “The innovation part is actually only a tiny portion of the work we do in R&D,” she explains. “In the end, it's probably not even that hard to come up with a very innovative idea. The harder part comes when you want to implement it and make your technology available.”

And that can require some patience: “These processes take time. Sometimes, you have to circle back and brainstorm fresh, creative ideas to address feedback from other teams – from the designers, the production team, from marketing and the customer support group. To launch a product successfully, you really need everyone's support.”

In the end, de Theije, her team, and the colleagues that support them believe in the technology and know that all the work is worth it. “We’re convinced that our solution can really make an important contribution to enable better access to fast diagnosis,” she says. “Especially also at small hospitals, in rural areas, or care institutions in low- and middle-income countries, where they don’t have a big lab nearby.” In the future, they want to develop their technology further. Since Atellica VTLi is created as a platform, it could be expanded to test for more conditions where fast results matter. 

As long as teams like de Theije’s keep following their heart and solving the puzzles of innovation with an open-minded, curious, and responsible approach, the future of emergency care shines a little brighter.