The Peezy Midstream will be one of the most unusual gifts ever included in the swag bags that are given to Oscar nominees in the major acting and directing categories and it will also be one of the most important for the health of women in America.

This gift to Hollywood’s biggest stars may even save lives by drawing attention to the suffering of women around the world with urinary tract infections (UTIs) that often go undiagnosed, misdiagnosed or inaccurately treated because of hit-or-miss urine sample collection.

Peezy Midstream devices will be given to the 25 acting and director nominees which include Renee Zellweger, Charlize Theron, Scarlett Johansson and Cynthia Erivo and will include information on how women can learn more about one of the biggest hidden issues in women’s healthcare.

Any woman who has suffered from a UTI – about 7 million females a year in the USA - knows just how miserable it is and how difficult it can be to treat.

Messy specimen collection means around 20% of urine samples are unreliable. Misdiagnosis is particularly dangerous in pre-natal care, where accurate screening is critical to the health of mother and child. Unreliable diagnoses can lead to unnecessary antibiotic prescribing, fuelling the global crisis of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and putting women and their unborn children on the frontline of antibiotic immunity.

Peezy Midstream is a urine collection system that makes analysis, diagnosis and treatment possible and can lead to better outcomes for patients.

Primary care physician Dr. Vincent Forte designed the device to guarantee the midstream specimen that all guidelines recommend. The Peezy Midstream is also clinically proven to improve outcomes, reduce  false positives by up to 70% and contamination from a national US average of 20% to an average 1.5%  significantly reducing the 55 million US patients being failed by urinalysis annually and requiring costly retests and unnecessary medication; urinary issues are believed to be responsible for almost half of  Gram-negative blood infections, which can lead to sepsis.

Giovanna Forte, CEO of Forte Medical, which is behind Peezy Midstream, said: “Urine is the window into your health. It’s the most common routine diagnostic procedure in medicine, yet there is no protocol for its collection. Given that urine has diagnostic parity with blood, this is the biggest problem that healthcare providers don’t know they have. We want to change the hearts and minds of policy makers and put this right.

“Critically, we also want to reach women – particularly pregnant women – whose unreliable samples lead to second and even third tests. These repeat procedures are costly not only for healthcare providers and insurers but for the patients themselves, taking time out of their busy lives when accurate collection means their UTI can be treated right first time.”

Forte is opening a satellite office in Irvine, California with the co-operation of the Greater Irvine Chamber of Commerce, where a focus on medtech and healthtech has led to unprecedented help and welcome.

Melissa Kramer, founder of Live UTI Free, said: “Recurrent urinary tract infection is a huge problem I personally spent five years fighting excruciating symptoms, in despair over the lack of actionable information available.

“Since launching Live UTI Free to address the information gap, we’ve heard from thousands of people with similar stories. It may be non-lethal for most, but the continuous cycle of recurrent UTI ruins lives.

“We’ve heard this time and time again. Strong evidence shows that the standard UTI test is highly inaccurate and this must be acknowledged. Research is being done, but it’s not enough and it’s time we do better. The move by Peezy Midstream to improve one crucial part of the equation is very welcome.”