LiDCO Group plc (AIM: LID), the cardiovascular monitoring company, is delighted to announce that its LiDCOplus Hemodynamic Monitor was awarded the “Business Innovation of the Year Award” at the Cambridge Evening News Business Excellence Awards ceremony held at King’s College, Cambridge on 23 March 2006.

The judges were most impressed with the potential benefits from LiDCO’s minimally invasive technology, which could save the NHS half a billion pounds per year and said: “LiDCO is all about saving lives… if I were in hospital and I had to choose, there would be absolutely no choice, I’d want a LiDCO monitor…they are knocking over a 30-year-old technology and it’s a great achievement to have got where they have…the challenges they have overcome are very impressive”.

Runners-up were Aegate’s fake-drug detection system and CMR Fuel Cells’ new alternative energy technology. Previous winners have included Cambridge Biostability, (room temperature vaccine storage), Plastic Logic (enabling microchips to be printed in plastic instead of silicon) and Cambridge Positioning Systems (emergency location-finding technology for mobile phone users).

Dr Terry O’Brien, CEO of Lidco Group Plc, said: “The Cambridge and Silicon Fen area is a hotbed for new technology and so competition for the Business Innovation Award is fierce. We are therefore very honoured to have won this award which acknowledges how powerful the economic and practical benefits from the LiDCOplus system really are.”

Notes to Editors

About LiDCO Plc

LiDCO is a UK-based AIM-traded developer, manufacturer and leading supplier of minimally invasive, computer-based hemodynamic monitoring equipment and disposables used primarily for the management of critical care and cardiovascular risk hospital patients. Use of LiDCO's technology has been shown to significantly reduce the complications (particularly infections) and costs associated with major surgery. The technology was invented in the Department of Applied Physiology based at St Thomas' Hospital, London where the Company maintains a research base.

The Company’s manufacturing facility is in Hoxton, London and its current products are: 

• LiDCOplus and PulseCO monitors: computer-based platforms for displaying a range of real-time, continuous hemodynamic parameters including cardiac output, oxygen delivery and fluid volume;

• LiDCO disposables: used in conjunction with the LiDCOplus Monitor to accurately determine cardiac output in a minimally-invasive manner.

Distribution Network:

The Company has now achieved registration of its products in 13 markets in Europe, the USA, Brazil and Japan. It sells direct to the NHS in the UK, and through a worldwide network of specialty critical care distributors.

Background to the recently published clinical trial: Better than standard care – Early Goal Directed Therapy (EGDT) improves outcome in high risk surgery patients:

A major trial at St George's Hospital, London, using LiDCO's minimally invasive monitoring technology, revealed the following:

a) Savings in the cost of treating patients amounting to an average of 12 days less spent in the hospital saving approximately £4,800 per patient. Extrapolated nationally, this would equate to a saving of £500 million per annum for the NHS

b) The savings in cost and hospital days were associated with a significant reduction in medical complications (particularly infections - which were halved) through the use of LiDCO's minimally invasive technology to improve tissue oxygen levels following surgery.