LABORATORY INFORMATICS
“The folks at public health departments are recognising that if this thing has utility in applicability to disease surveillance”
challenging because you are out in the field somewhere,’ added Gabathuler. Labware developed the Portable
Disease Surveillance Lab kit in partnership with Tangen Biosciences. They recently announced a partnership for LabWare to distribute Tangen’s GeneSpark device as part of the kit in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The kit connects to the LabWare
LIMS software portal to capture patient demographic and clinical information, document field collection of respiratory swabs for Covid-19 testing, accession the sample, and rapidly disseminate this data to public health agencies. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic,
LabWare designed the Portable Disease Surveillance Lab kit to fit all the necessary components in a suitcase to enable patient registration and testing in field locations such as drive-up testing or assisted living facilities. Patient demographics and triage details
can be captured on the tablet computer, and the information will be transferred to the cloud.
Using the Tangen testing system, high-priority patient specimens will be tested immediately with Tangen’s GeneSpark device, and both the patient details and test results will be transferred
www.scientific-computing.com | @scwmagazine
electronically through LabWare’s cloud- based LIMS to public health labs and the CDC in less than 30 minutes. Beyond Covid-19, Tangen is making a
Flu/COVID-19 Panel that can detect Flu A, Flu B and Covid-19 simultaneously from one patient sample in a single processing run, so that patients with flu-like symptoms will know whether they have flu or Covid-19 infection or none of them. Richard Birkmeyer, president and CEO
at Tangen, commented: ‘The Covid-19 pandemic is tragic for many families. Everyone at Tangen Biosciences has been working long hours to have our sensitive Covid-19 assay on the market. More importantly, we believe the combined Covid-19 and Flu A/B test will be a critical surveillance tool for respiratory illness management. In addition to the Covid-19 test, we are also developing a sepsis panel and an antimicrobial-resistant panel, and we are currently looking for strategic partners for both projects.’ The companies are aiming to continue this partnership to include multi-target testing. The combination of Tangen’s rapid, highly sensitive and point-of-care molecular diagnostics and LabWare’s real- time data reporting LIMS software should enable public health systems to react quickly in terms of quarantine guidelines,
patient tracing, hotspot monitoring, and infection surveillance. When the testing kit was first announced by the two companies, US Senator Chris Coons of the State of Delaware commented: ‘LabWare and Tangen have brought forward an exciting new capability to deliver portable, rapid testing that also connects testing data seamlessly to state public health and CDC databases. I’m grateful for their dedication and their innovation and look forward to seeing the impact this new system can make on our nation’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.’ Tangen’s Covid-19 program has been funded in part with Federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services: Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, under Contract No. 75A50120C00085. ‘The solution was originally developed in
response to Covid but the folks at public health departments are recognising that if this thing has utility in applicability to disease surveillance in general. The ability to be flexible so that it is not just “hard coded” to deal with a Covid pandemic is important because our approach is to leave them with an infrastructure that is going to be useful for a long time,’ Krasovec concluded.
Adapting to demand Several LIMS companies have been quick to adapt to the new demand for Covid-19 testing, with both Horizon and Lablynx quickly adapting their existing LIMS technologies. Horizon, a LIMS software and services
company, is working with clinical data exchange and business intelligence provider Halfpenny Technologies to accelerate Covid-19 testing and results delivery through Accumen’s Covid-19 Regional Test Capacity and Routing Network, launched May 6, 2020. The Network was created to streamline
frontline testing efforts, automate electronic processing, and ensure timely and consistent delivery to all necessary reporting entities.
g Summer 2020 Scientific Computing World 17
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38
