i-sense EPSRC IRC Agile Early-Warning Sensing Systems for Infectious Disease and Antimicrobial Resistance i-sense started in ... October 2013 as a five-year, £11M Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC), funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). In 2017, the EPSRC awarded i-sense an additional £3.8M for IRC next steps funding. Our mission is to engineer a new generation of early-warning sensing systems to identify outbreaks of infectious disease much earlier than ever before, helping people gain faster access to care and protecting populations. Outbreaks of infectious disease can spread rapidly and unpredictably, causing enormous losses to health and livelihood. Without adequate diagnostic tools, there is the threat of on-going transmission of serious infections and delay in the identification of emerging outbreaks. Our mobile phone-connected diagnostic tools aim to widen access to testing in GP surgeries, in the community throughout developing countries, and in the home. The aim is to build tools that are simple to use, cheap to manufacture, and provide rapid and accurate results. The capability to detect infections and then wirelessly connect test results to healthcare systems will help patients gain faster access to treatment, and support public health efforts to map indicators of emerging infections in real-time. We are also using the vast amount of web-based information on Google and Twitter to identify indicators of disease outbreaks before people attend clinics, or from geographical regions that are not covered by traditional public health systems. read more