Giovanna’s annual talk to the Imperial Business School took place last week; here we share the presentation Deck. Had she known in 2002 what she knows now, it would have taken a third of the time to create three specimen collection products and a springboard to global reach. She and Dr Vincent Forte are beyond proud of what they have achieved. 202210_ForteMedical_HealthTech_Commercialisation_Journey
A rise in persistent UTIs could be linked to antibiotic crackdown appeared in The Guardian on Saturday 5th October. As usual, no-one mentioned accurate basic specimen collection, which can lead to unwarranted specimen quality variation, failed analysis and less-than-targeted prescribing. Giovanna Forte had something to say. Click here to read her published letter.
We are delighted to announce the appointment of consultant midwife and lifelong campaigner for positive childbirth, Sheena Byrom OBE to our Advisory Panel.
Sheena Byrom is a practising midwife of 40 years, having worked in the NHS for most of that time. One of the UK’s first consultant midwives, and as head of midwifery, she successfully helped to lead the development of three birth centres in East Lancashire. An international speaker, Sheena provides consultancy services to both NHS Trusts and to organisations globally; helping them to support normal, physiological childbirth. She is involved in several midwifery related charities, and is one of the project leads of the Midwifery Unit Network, which assists and promotes midwifery led units (birth centres) both online, and face-to-face. Sheena and her midwife daughter Anna Byrom are the proud new owners of The Practising Midwife, and an exciting online platform All4Materity.com – the go to place for maternity workers to learn, share and care.
Sheena’s midwifery memoirs, Catching Babies, is a Sunday Times bestseller, and her seminal book, The Roar Behind the Silence: why kindness, compassion and respect matter in maternity care jointly edited with Soo Downe, is being used as a resource to improve maternity care throughout the world. Sheena and Soo are currently editing a second book, ‘Squaring the Circle: researching normal childbirth in a technological world’, will be published in 2019.
Sheena was awarded an OBE in 2011 for services to midwifery, and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Midwives in 2015. In 2016 and 2018, Sheena received Honorary Doctorates from Bournemouth University and the University of Central Lancashire, and in 2017 she was made a Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University. Her personal and midwifery related website is sheenabyrom.com.
Sheena is committed to the humanisation of childbirth, to maximising normal physiological birth processes, and for all women to experience a positive birth. The global onslaught of medical technology as a means to improve safety continues to influence childbearing women’s physiology and autonomy, and her work to reverse the trend is ongoing.
Commenting on her appointment, Giovanna Forte said: “With over 5 million urine samples provided every year by pregnant women and up to 1 in 4 of those being contaminated, it is incredibly important to us to have someone of Sheena’s expertise, knowledge and practical experience in the antenatal sector to help us. We very much look forward to working with her to positively change attitudes towards urine specimen collection and further help improve right-first-time diagnosis and appropriate treatment for pregnant women as well as the well-being of mother and baby.”
Barry Shrier, Founder of annual health innovation event Giant Live, presents the third Disruptor Giant Health Innovators TV interview featuring Giovanna Forte, CEO of Forte Medical, Francis White from AliveCor, Dr Sophie Bostock of Sleepio and Etienne Bourdon from Healthy Health. Watch the half-hour programme here with Disruptive Live
We are proud to be part of Urology Awareness Month this September:
“Clinical Innovation in Specimen Collection and Diagnostics”
Royal Society of Medicine
Tuesday 13 September 2016 – 9.30 am to 12.30 pm
A Urology Awareness Month Event
Imagine if blood specimens were delivered to the laboratory with mixed growth rates ranging from 0.38% to over 70%. Unlike blood specimen collection, there is no protocol for the collection of urine and this disparity in specimen quality is a reality across today’s NHS.
Like blood, urine is used for diagnosis and treatment that saves lives. Yet in this basic area of medicine, where 65 million urine specimens are analyzed annually in the UK, high numbers of unreliable specimens are wasting money and jeopardising the health of the nation.
Forte Medical is the leading designer of specimen collection systems that make right-first-time analysis, diagnosis and treatment implicit to routine medicine and this Forum, with the support and participation of The Urology Foundation, Association of British Healthcare Industries (ABHI) and the South East Health Technologies Alliance (SEHTA), will address the needs and incite debate around the adoption of improved collection processes.
Chaired by Dr Dawn Harper with an introduction from Louise de Winter, Chief Executive of The Urology Foundation, the Forum includes presentations by:
Miss Linda Collins, BSc MSc RN, Whittington Health NHS Trust, on the outcome of a three year, randomized, single blind comparative study on urine sampling method.
Professor Frank Chinegwundoh MBE, Barts and The Royal London NHS Trust, on Quality Improvement Audit results around diligent specimen collection, associated hygiene and what improvements mean for clinician and patient.
Professor James Barlow, Professor of Technology and Innovation Management (Healthcare), Imperial College Business School, on how innovation can transform health outcomes, with implicit cost and efficiency savings.
There will also be a discussion panel with the above participants and other key opinion-formers in health and patient care, including Professor Alan Sinclair, Director of Foundation for Diabetes Research in Older People, and Senior Editor of Pathy’s Principles and Practice of Geriatrics and Gerontology, followed by audience Q&As.
Places are limited: to book, please contact:
Nicola Hyde +44 (0)7801 187757 forum@forte-medical.com
Note to Media Editors:
Forte Medical: Introducing an accurate, hygienic and dignified solution to an overlooked area of basic medicine has been the mission of Forte Medical for the past ten years. Co-founded by Giovanna Forte and her NHS GP brother, Dr Vincent Forte, it began with Dr Forte’s repeated problems in getting reliable midstream urine specimens from patients from which he could diagnose their symptoms and accurately treat. He designed a solution, the Peezy Midstream. Today, the Peezy is in use within over 40 NHS Trusts and the private healthcare system. Proud to make in Britain, Forte Medical has recently started exporting to the USA.
All media enquiries to Nicola Hyde
From 30th October 2015, we have moved from our home of seven years to bigger, brighter premises:
Forte Medical Limited
12 Tabernacle Court
16-28 Tabernacle Street
London EC2A 4DD
Phone number to be advised; if you need to contact us, please e-mail Giovanna and Owen using hello@forte-medical.com
“I have used a number of Peezy Midstreams and they are great. It certainly makes testing my ketones so much less messy and more hygienic.
The instructions are straightforward. The first one I was unable to take a big enough sample from but after that it’s been straightforward. It will certainly give a more accurate reading in pregnancy and is so easy to use with the majority of patients. In Derby Hospital they give me a cardboard pot with my name on to use and can have it sitting in the sampling room for sometime; I had to remind them on my last visit that my sample was still waiting to be checked after half an hour. ”
Philippa, ten weeks pregnant with acute sickness up to 20 times daily.
Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) is a severe form of Nausea and Vomiting during Pregnancy (NVP). Read more about it at MamaAcademy