DNANudge’s Portable COVID Testing Machine Expands Options For Health & Safety Managers

DNANudge’s Portable COVID Testing Machine Expands Options For Health & Safety Managers

Seven months into the COVID-19 crisis, health and safety managers have worked with colleagues in HR, facilities and operations to implement multi-faceted COVID-19 risk management processes. Firms have already leveraged occupational health software from vendors like Cority and ProcessMAP. Specialist occupational health software vendor Enterprise Health has launched a standalone web-based system called Channel-19 to collect, monitor and analyse COVID-19 medical data. These employee infection, sickness and recovery monitoring systems help control COVID-19 outbreaks in workplaces. But with government-run testing not keeping up with demand health and safety managers lack real-time information. Due to asymptomatic transmission, they risk presiding over a significant COVID-19 cluster or else forcing large numbers of staff to self-isolate.

That’s why a portable, lab-on-a-chip COVID-19 testing machine should be added to the health and safety manager’s armoury. The COVID Nudge device from DNANudge ticks all the boxes for providing closer to real-time, point of care COVID-19 testing. The test can be administered by anyone capable of taking a nose swab and provides a result within 90 minutes. Crucially, clinical studies have demonstrated that it has sufficiently high levels of accuracy to be approved by regulators. The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has authorized the COVID Nudge test for clinical use and the UK National Health Service has ordered 5,000 COVID Nudge machines and 58 million cartridges. The COVID Nudge device has already been tested in 8 UK hospitals for several months.

Over coming months many more portable COVID-19 testing kits based on DNA amplification rather than the lab-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests will be brought to market. The LamPORE assay from Oxford Nanopore Technologies is currently moving through the regulatory approval process and the firm intends to offer it on its MinION portable device. Talis Biomedical is one of the many other biotech firms working on a portable device for rapid and accurate point of care testing. In July, the firm was awarded a $25 million contract from the US National Institutes of Health for its Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics initiative. Anticipating high demand for its Talis One portable diagnostic platform, Talis has completed $100 million in additional financing.

To learn more about integrated risk management for COVID-19 register to join our Next & Best Practices virtual event on November 4 with speakers from Colgate-Palmolive, KPA, IsoMetrix, Sulzer and Unipro.