THE company now behind TruCCOMS - the potentially revolutionary heart monitoring system first launched by failed medical device firm AorTech - is hoping to raise fresh funds by the end of this year to help take the product into the US.

Omega Critical Care, the company set up two years ago by TruCCOMS inventor Aws Nashef, has re-launched TruCCOMS after making significant improvements to the system. This has led to orders from three different countries during the past two months, Nashef said, plus substantial interest from elsewhere.

Nashef has spent the last 14 years developing TruCCOMS, and was formerly chief scientist at Bellshill-based AorTech.

When the troubled AorTech withdrew the product from the market in early 2003, the intellectual property rights automatically reverted to Nashef.

Cash-strapped AorTech was forced to cut off all development and marketing spending on TruCCOMS after initial sales came through slower than expected. This was linked to certain teething problems with the system that Nashef has spent the last two years ironing out.

The improvements were centred around shortening the delay between a change in heart performance and the recording of this by the monitor. Nashef said the system now provides secondby-second monitoring, which is crucial in key niche markets such as beating heart surgery.

Based in East Kilbride, Omega now employs 20 people, many of whom worked on the TruCCOMS team at AorTech. The company has to date been funded by external investments of approximately GBP800,000, and some GBP580,000 in grants and similar support from Scottish Enterprise Lanarkshire and the Regional Selective Assistance programme. Nashef said Omega hoped to raise a further GBP1.2m by the start of next year to help market TruCCOMS in the lucrative US market.