NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE / MIDDLESBROUGH, 12-10-26 — Delirium, a sudden and distressing change in a person’s mental state, affects up to half of care home residents living with dementia — causing falls, hospital admissions, and faster decline in thinking and memory. Dehydration is a major, preventable cause of delirium. Until now, care home staff have had no simple way of reliably monitoring a resident’s hydration status.
Salvivo Limited has been awarded funding by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). This funding was designed to support the real-world integration of preventive technologies into the workflow of community care settings.
The project, “Saliva Collection and Hydration Monitoring for Delirium Risk Prediction in Care Home Settings,” is a collaboration between Salvivo, Teesside University, Stockton Council, and care home staff, residents, and families within the Teesside Dementia Research Partnership Network (DRPN). The project begins on 1 September 2026.
Co-applicant Dr Ahmad Khundakar, Head of Integrated Science at Teesside University, said:
We are delighted to collaborate on this important and timely project to explore whether improved hydration monitoring could help identify delirium risk in care home residents with dementia. This is a feasibility study to understand whether weekly hydration checks are practical and acceptable in care home settings. We will combine hydration readings with a simple delirium check (the 4AT) and collect saliva samples to assess the practical aspects of sample handling and storage for future research.
FishburneTabs®OH, Salvivo’s paper-based hydration indicator, is placed on the tongue for a few seconds and gives a rapid reading of oral hydration levels. The saliva collected during the test dries immediately and can be stored for future research. Early use in care homes has shown the test to be simple and well received by care staff, residents, and managers alike. This project will enable Salvivo to work with partners to generate further evidence to support larger studies, build the health economic case, and advance regulatory submissions.
Dr Dale Athey, CEO of Salvivo, said:
This project is an important next step for Salvivo. It lets us work alongside outstanding research partners at Teesside University to answer a question that genuinely matters to care homes — could something as simple as a daily hydration check help protect residents from delirium? It also builds directly on the relationships we have developed with care homes and the Health Innovation Network across the North East and Cumbria, and gives us the evidence base we need as we prepare FishburneTabsTM for wider adoption across the NHS and social care.
Professor Philip Preshaw, Clinical Director at Salvivo and Lead Investigator, said:
This research supports the government’s goal of shifting healthcare from hospitals to communities, and from treatment to prevention, and will play a key role in developing our innovative platform.
Jo Smart, Programme Director of the NIHR Invention for Innovation Programme, which is funding the project, said:
“The NIHR i4i FAST scheme plays a vital role in taking innovative health technologies out of isolated testing environments and embedding them where patients need them most. Through this partnership with the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre Network, we are thrilled to support 19 projects looking to integrate smart preventive tools directly into local community settings, tackling health inequalities and making patient care more accurate and efficient.
This funding represents a significant boost to Salvivo’s goal of transforming oral health monitoring through simple, sustainable, and accessible tools for early risk identification and prevention of systemic disease — improving lives while reducing healthcare costs.
About Salvivo Limited
Salvivo is a Newcastle-based health technology company building FishburneTabsTM a paper-based saliva monitoring platform designed to be the saliva equivalent of the Dried Blood Spot card. The company’s mission is to make oral health and hydration monitoring simple, sustainable, and accessible for early risk identification and prevention of systemic disease.
About Teesside University
Teesside University is a dynamic and modern institution, dedicated to delivering opportunity and providing a high-quality higher education learning environment, offering innovative courses taught by committed and passionate staff.
Awarded Times Higher Education University of the Year 2025 and Daily Mail Modern University of the Year 2026, Teesside University is recognised for its transformative teaching, bold innovation, and life-changing impact.
About the NIHR
The mission of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research. We do this by:
- Funding high quality, timely research that benefits the NHS, public health and social care;
- Investing in world-class expertise, facilities and a skilled delivery workforce to translate discoveries into improved treatments and services;
- Partnering with patients, service users, carers and communities, improving the relevance, quality and impact of our research;
- Attracting, training and supporting the best researchers to tackle complex health and social care challenges;
- Collaborating with other public funders, charities and industry to help shape a cohesive and globally competitive research system;
- Funding applied global health research and training to meet the needs of the poorest people in low and middle income countries.
NIHR is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care. Its work in low and middle income countries is principally funded through UK international development funding from the UK government.