Product Launch
Alere introduces the World’s first fingerstick BNP test
Alere™ Heart Check System 
For a high resolution image please email catherines@alto-marekting.com
Alere has launched the World’s first fingerstick BNP (b-type natriuretic peptide) test as an aid in diagnosis and assessment of severity of patients with heart failure. Providing rapid point of care BNP results to aid healthcare professionals in their decision making process, the compact BNP analyser provides lab accurate results within 15 minutes from a 12µl capillary blood sample. The new Alere™ Heart Check System is designed to aid in the diagnosis of heart failure, assess the severity of heart failure, and enable risk stratification of patients with heart failure as well as those with acute coronary syndromes.The Alere™ Heart Check System consists of a portable, compact analysis platform and the Alere™ Heart Check BNP Test Strips. The smart technology used in the test strips facilitates the simple testing process, making analysis quick, clean and easy. The system offers an objective, non invasive diagnostic tool at the point-of-care with excellent correlation to the predicate lab-based assay.
“Our approach to connected health is changing where care is delivered. Our new Alere™ Heart Check System will provide clinicians and patients with analytical data in real-time, contributing to improved quality of life for those diagnosed with or at risk of heart failure, whilst at the same time lowering healthcare and associated costs.” explains Ron Zwanziger, Chairman and CEO of Alere. Heart failure can often be confused with other conditions, such as lung disease, making an accurate diagnosis important to ensure the most appropriate treatment and care is in place. BNP levels can help doctors differentiate between heart failure and other problems, since the level of natriuretic peptides in the blood increases as chronic heart failure advances. Timely heart failure treatment decisions at the point-of-care can not only accelerate diagnosis and treatment, but also reduce re-admission rates for heart failure patients and associated costs.The Alere™ Heart Check system is CE marked, which expresses conformity with the requirements of the European IVD Directive and will initially be launched in Germany, Italy, Ireland, UK and Sweden. A timeline for US and the rest of the world availability will be established shortly.
About Alere (formerly Inverness Medical)
By developing new capabilities in near-patient diagnosis, monitoring and health management, Alere enables individuals to take charge of improving their health and quality of life at home. Alere’s global leading products and services, as well as its new product development efforts, focus on infectious disease, cardiology, oncology, drugs of abuse and women’s health. Alere is headquartered in
For more information about Alere, please visit http://www.alere.com.
Product enquiries Alere Email: professionaldiagnostics@alere.comMedia enquiries: Cat Stormont, Alto Marketing Limited
Tel: +44 (0) 1489 557 672
Email: catherines@alto-marketing.com
Fit Kid Festival of Energy
The employees of Alere Technologies Ltd. were delighted to support the FitKid Festival of Energy on Sunday 24th July in Stirling. Over 200 local children aged 2 to 10 took part in the day designed to encourage fun fitness and getting kids and families active.
The day was a huge success and the weather was fantastic. One of our employees, Iain Deane, took part in the events with his daughter Catie and wife Lee. Iain said "I'm really glad that we took part in the Festival of Energy; Catie and her friends really enjoyed themselves. It was great to see them all taking part in the race - even if they took a little bit longer to finish! The inflatables and rides were also a hit".
We were also delighted to support the stewarding of the event, to help make the day a huge success. Mandy Beer, the organiser of the day said "It was great to see so many children and parents joining in with the Festival of energy and the kidathlon fun run. This would not have been possible without the support from Alere Technologies who kindly sponsored the event and helped with the marshalling. Can't wait till 2012 for the next festival of energy in Stirling!". Our thoughts exactly!
Isle of Man End 2 End
A group of our site cyclists (Murray, Kevin and Jim) took part in this year’s Isle of Man End 2 End Mountain Bike challenge. This is an annual event starting at Ayre’s Point at the North of the Island, traveling over 45 miles of mountain trails to the South of the island. With over 1400 entrants this year, this is a major event on the mountain biking calendar. We were really lucky with the weather and after a real hard day finished the course in the following times:
Murray Whyte 4 Hrs 49mins 41secs 313th
Kevin Fallon 5 Hrs 59 Mins 30secs 755thJim McLean 7 Hrs 07 mins 30secs 980th
Great effort by all and a huge thanks to everyone who helped Kevin raise £500 for 'The A Team', a support group who organise social activities for kids on the autistic spectrum . A special thank you to Donogh for his support (well he did take the photos) through the weekend to make it all go smoothly. His rat on fire story was worth the money alone!
Strathcarron Hospice Midnight Walk - May 2010
The Midnight Walk is a charity event supporting Strathcarron Hospice, located in Denny, providing free professional care for patients with life limiting illnesses. Linda has previously supported a number of charity events, including the Race for Life. We are all very proud of Linda and the £110 she raised for this fantastic charity.
If you would like to find out more about Strathcarron, please click on the link below. http://www.strathcarronhospice.org/Alere Quiz Night - April 2010
We held our first annual Alere Quiz Night on 23rd April at the Birds ‘n’ Bees in Causewayhead. Great turn out, with over 70 people at the event. Callum was our quiz master for the evening and posed a great set of questions, along with the Paper Plane Flying competition and Pin the Tail on the Donkey rounds. At the end of the evening Monika’s team (The Good, The Bad and The Deano) ran out deserved winners. The event was also used to raise funds for Maggies Cancer Caring Centres, with over £490 raised on the evening. Great effort everyone! Everyone had a fantastic night and we are all looking forward to next years event.Stirling Medical Innovations Ltd rebranded to Alere Technologies Ltd – 1st April 2010 As of 1st April 2010, Stirling Medical Innovations Limited will change its name and commence doing business under the new company name Alere Technologies Limited.
As part of a phased approach, various diagnostic business units of the parent company Inverness Medical Innovations (IMA), as well as various Inverness product groups, will be rebranded under the name Alere. The rebranding under a unified name will help customers better recognize the true product range, depth and global reach of our healthcare offering. Alere is derived from Latin and means to nurture, to care for, or to support. As a company focused on improving the quality of patient care, the name Alere well represents our goals. Alere´s unique portfolio of diagnostic capabilities combined with health management tools and services:-
Empowers patients to take charge of their own health at home Enables healthcare providers and payers to improve outcomes and decrease costs
Allows doctors and patients to better connect with each other and providing the information necessary to make better healthcare decisions The creation of the unified Alere brand better expresses the value that the combined IMA companies bring to our business strategy. The integration of our rapid diagnostic products with our health services, leverages technology and empowers individuals by bringing healthcare decisions even closer to the consumer.
Alere´s unique portfolio of diagnostic capabilities combined with health management tools and services:-
Maggie’s Cake Bake Day - March 2010
To support Maggie’s Day on the 26th March 2010, we held a two day cake bake – was meant to be for one day but we had so many employees, making so many cakes we had to! Over the two days we raised £136 for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centre’s. Over the last five years, Alere has been a strong supporter of this great cause with many events organized to raise funds.A Maggie’s Centre is a place to turn to for help with any of the problems, small or large, associated with cancer. Under one roof you can access help with information, benefits advice, psychological support both individually and in groups, courses and stress reducing strategies. You don’t have to make an appointment, or be referred and everything offered is free of charge. It is there for anybody who feels the need for help, which includes those who love and look after someone with cancer, who often feel as frightened and vulnerable as those who actually have the disease. A Maggie’s Centre will be many things to many people. It is there for anybody to use in the way they want to. There isn’t a one size fits all recipe for how you live with cancer. Everybody needs to find their own way. The job of the professionals at Maggie’s is to listen to you, to help you find out what you want and give you the tools to help yourself.
http://www.maggiescentres.org/maggies/maggiescentres/home/home.htmlStirling Medical Innovations continue to participate in
Murray Whyte, a Senior Development Engineer at Stirling Medical Innovations and
Best Companies Award accredited “Outstanding – 2 Star Status” – January 2010
Stirling’s Star Performance Here in
We have been granted the “outstanding” two star status by the prestigious Best Companies Accreditation scheme – the ‘Michelin’ style star rating system for companies throughout
As you would expect the process involves a rigorous methodology developed by surveying more than 1,000,000 employees in over 2000 organisations.
Best Companies Accreditation measures the level of Workforce Engagement within a company, recognising it as the key driver of sustainable business performance.
Our results showed an incredible 94.9% engagement level – a massive three times the
We believe the results are an endorsement of our distinctive culture of creating an environment where people can excel and where they maximise their potential and opportunity.
There is no SMI’ type’. From day one we have cultivated a performance based culture where it’s not only what you do but how you do it that counts. Wanting to be clearly different we formulated our own WOW factors:
Trust and be trusted
Innovate
Enjoy the journey
Be courageous
- Be accountable
They have just delivered BIG TIME by placing us among the top 190 of companies given Best Companies Accreditation this year.
Importantly this award also means we will deliver for the entire Inverness Medical family.
Research shows accredited companies significantly out perform the stock market achievement of those listed on the FTSE 100 index.
“We would like to congratulate Stirling Medical Innovations. An engaged workforce is essential as organisations move out of the recession and into a more stable economic situation. No doubt many organisations have tackled redundancies and rapid change this year. But organisations like Stirling Medical Innovations that have kept on engaging their staff and making sure they are involved in the business will be in a good position for the future and should be congratulated for their efforts”.
David Lang, Managing Director of SMI, said: “We are all thrilled at receiving this award. It is an outstanding achievement that flows from our uniquely tailored people culture that encourages empowerment through trust, courage to innovate and a sense of enjoyment in attaining goals and knowing that we can all make a difference. A team spirit ethos is at the heart of everything we do.”
One employee response to the survey question ‘What do you think makes this a great workplace?’: “A good sense of team-spirit. A sense of mission. A good culture of cross-tier interaction and commitment to employee development. Interesting and creative work. Interesting and polite people.”
Ramping up Manufacturing – July 2009
Through the course of 2009 we have tweaked the processes and resourcing and on Tuesday 7th July 09 successfully produced our first batch which delivered a 175% increase on capacity from Jan 2009. This is going to secure the supply of strips for our in-house use and the ongoing clinical trials.
First batch of product in to Clinical trials in the
The first batches of our product has been shipped to the