Customisable point-of-care diagnostic device

The objective behind the point-of-care device is to provide easier access into the healthcare system for culturally and geographically hard-to-reach communities across the globe. This device is portable, and has been designed to enable testing at low-costs. The design eliminates the need for trained medial staff, or expensive lab facilities which are rarely available in remote and developing countries. The device is designed to yields rapid results, allowing patients to wait on site for their results, contributing to improved engagement with the screening programme.

The design of this device is configurable, but it has one fundamental principle; a cartridge is inserted and the device operates it to provide rapid result, for a range of diseases. For example, it operates cartridges which screen for osteoporosis, HPV and cervical cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. Each disease requires a different assay and therefore the device is built to operate the specific cartridge, which handle different types of samples (blood, cervical etc).

Microfluidics is a challenging area of medicine. Typically, the small scale and requirement for vey high precision flow of liquids has lead to a history of unsuccessful operation and unreliable output data. The Labman point-of-care device has been robustly tested and provides repeated successful outputs, the significance of which has been accredited by industry experts.

Read about ELEVATE, a cervical cancer screening device designed to operate a super complex microfluidic cartridge. The test executes two different assays, detecting 14 different HPV strains, along with two protein based cancer biomarkers. There are a number of obstacles associated with cervical cancer screening in developing countries. These range from lack of access to suitable clinics, to concerns around sample collection which typically requires an invasive swab collection method by medical staff. The ELEVATE project is currently awaiting clinical validation, and further assessments of user-acceptence and cost effectiveness.