Taiwanese-Danish firm BluSense Diagnostics has developed a device to diagnose COVID-19 with 90 percent certainty within 12 minutes using one drop of blood, and the EU next month could license it for use and it could be available in Taiwan by June.
Company president Filippo Bosco and executive vice president Jessie Sun (孫偉芸) yesterday demonstrated the machine at a news conference.
The device, no larger than an electronic blood pressure monitor, can detect immunoglobulins M and G, which are antibodies produced in the body in the early and mid-late stage of COVID-19 infection, Sun said.
Photo: Yang Mien-chieh, Taipei Times
As it is capable of producing results within 12 minutes, the machine could help detect whether patients are infected during the recovery period, screen local cluster infections, detect asymptomatic patients and screen those traveling abroad, she said.
It could also be used to verify whether patients should be cleared to leave the hospital, she added.
The machine last week underwent preliminary clinical tests at the Hvidovre Hospital near Copenhagen, Bosco said.
It has been able to identify whether the 15 subjects used in testing were positive or negative for the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, he said.
The company next week is looking to hold a larger-scale clinical trial — about 200 subjects — in Italy, Bosco said, adding that negotiations for conducting clinical trials in Taiwan are ongoing.
BluSense has previously developed diagnostic platforms for the Zika and dengue viruses, and the new platform had simply replaced the Zika and dengue virus antigen with a COVID-19 antigen, Sun said.
BluSense was established in 2014, with its equipment manufacturing and hardware development centers in Taoyuan’s Gueishan District (龜山), while its biochemistry research and development branch is in Copenhagen.
It received a US Agency for International Development grant in 2016 for developing ViroTrack, a rapid point of care diagnostics system using Blu-ray-based optical detection.
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