Austrian low power sensor firm ams AG has received funding from two Austrian Government ministries to develop a smart device to provide accurate testing for Covid-19. The hand held device is directly connected to a "medical data cloud", does not require a laboratory, and can deliver accurate test results within 15 minutes.
The two Austrian Government departments funding the new device are the Federal Ministry of Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK), and the Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs (BMDW).
ams has used the funds to develop a connected, smart version of a lateral flow test (LFT) device. Lateral flow tests are a standard approach for rapid point of care (PoC) testing. LFTs, which are usually analogue devices, are typically intuitive and easy to use, and are subject to strict regulatory requirements. A pregnancy strip test is a typical example of an analogue LFT device.
The challenge for ams was threefold: to create an electronic LFT specifically for Covid-19; to achieve high accuracy and reliability in testing; and to connect the device to a medical data cloud with encrypted communications to comply with GDPR, among other regulations.
At present in Austria, as in many other European countries, the main community-based Covid-19 test is polymerise chain reaction (PCR) -- in hospitals, serology testing is also used for greater accuracy, data on how advanced an infection might be, and whether a patient has had a non-symptomatic past infection.
The drawback of the PCR test is that it is laboratory based and highly labour intensive. This makes it time-consuming, with results consequently taking much longer to become available. It also makes the tests much more expensive, and introduces multiple occasions for error, resulting in false test results. PCR tests can produce false negatives in up to 30 percent of tests.
Austria is not alone in adopting LFT testing for Covid-19. The UK NHS health service, for example, has adopted LFT test kits from Abbott and Innova, among others, which can produce results within minutes. However, unlike the Austrian approach with ams, these are not connected smart devices.
The advantage of the ams device is that it provides a full guide to its use, and results once processed can be sent immediately to both the subject's phone and to health authorities and the patient's doctor, as well as being uploaded securely to the cloud.
Comments
Post a Comment