Development of a novel technology and platform concept for point-of-care diagnostics

Fast and accurate diagnostics is the key to personalized and effective therapy. In developed industrialized countries, and thus also in Germany, a dense network of service providers for laboratory diagnostics exists. Samples are usually dispatched by physicians to such service providers and are examined by the physicians according to the transmitted requirement for the corresponding diagnostic parameters. After the examination, the results are made available to the physician and transmitted to the patient.

With this centralized concept, however, there is always some delay in diagnosis and the findings are not generated in direct interaction between the physician and the patient. For individual parameters, so-called point-of-care (POC) tests have been developed that successfully occupy certain market niches, but so far these POC tests are hardly compatible with the routine processes established by general practitioners or at hospitals.

As a result, only very few point-of-care tests, which are directly required for clinical decision-making, have found their way into the routine, although a comprehensive data set exists in the scientific literature, which emphasizes the health-economical and clinical advantages of contemporary laboratory diagnostics.

Thus the goal of BLINK AG in this project is to develop a product platform that enables the most important in vitro diagnostic tests for immediate point-of-care use. The product platform is intended to make POC and laboratory diagnostics more compatible with each other and to establish in vitro diagnostic tests as aregular tool in the medical practices.

Project duration: 23.11.2015 – 31.01.2020

Project coordination: Eugen Ermantraut (BLINK AG)