Law firm brokers innovative breast screening deal for UK

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Law firm brokers innovative breast screening deal for UK

Last Updated on Friday, 03 October 2008 05:56 Friday, 03 October 2008 05:54

{mosimage}Law firm Mills & Reeve has brokered a deal allowing life-saving breast-screening technology to operate in the UK.

Technology and commerce lawyers assisted in negotiating an agreement for the ground-breaking infrared machines to be provided at clinics throughout the country – starting with the first centre in Cambridge. The centre is based at the Spire Cambridge Lea hospital in Impington.

Associate Sarah Cole, who handled the deal for International Health Technology, said the breast-screening machines were a first for the UK.

“The agreement appoints the company as the exclusive purchaser of the machines and exclusive provider of breast screening services using the machines in the UK,” she said.

IHT, which set up its first BreastHealth UK centre in Cambridge, now plans to offer the new service at centres across the country, said the company’s managing director Troels Jordansen.

“Mills & Reeve’s wide-ranging experience in the technology and commerce sector was enormously valuable to us in helping to negotiate the agreement which has allowed us to use the ISC (Infrared Sciences Corporation) machines to help save lives in the UK.

“Cambridge was the ideal location to launch our first BreastHealth UK clinic, and we will hope it will soon be followed by others.”

The infrared breast scan, developed in the US, works by spotting temperature changes in the breast during a period of cooling. Breast cancers have their own blood vessels which slows down the cooling, therefore enabling them to be detected by the heat sensitive camera.

“There is a good NHS breast-screening service for women between 50 and 70, but we wanted to introduce new technologies to help younger women,” said Troels.

“We will continue to explore new and innovative services, and hope to offer more in the future.”