Outsourcing of IVD Instrument Design Is Now A Must

As I wrote in the summer, the Battle of Britain was won with the newly invented RADAR (#overstatement?). In the war against COVID-19, our RADARs are diagnostics technologies which have taken first-page place in daily news: how many tests per day, turnaround time, rapid tests vs central lab tests, and even the possibility of testing at airports or sport events.

The powerful core of molecular diagnostics, a set of tools that reads the genetic material of the target pathogen, provides a mighty RADAR to healthcare providers across the world.

Molecular diagnostics has been a forte at Ximedica for many years, and even before the pandemic started we were already working with several companies on diagnostics systems. These companies were seeking to push the limits and availability of PCR at point of care and central laboratory. During the year, with renewed interest from the markets, we helped some of them pivot their technologies to rapid testing systems for COVID-19.

More work will be needed in the coming decades. National Geographic’s November issue strikingly describes the root cause of recent pandemics. Ancient natural environments kept viral pathogens safely secluded until now. However, deforestation in recent decades has pushed those pathogens into our…