PHOTONICS WEST OPTICAL DIAGNOSTICS
‘We desperately need to develop new diagnostic methods that might replace PCR to deal with future pandemics’
g
‘We’ve been trying to treat [Covid-19] as a black box. The trials try drug a, drug b, drug c and then just hope for results. If we could characterise the disease in vivo in humans, there will be jumps that occur. That is the same for all diseases, but we have really learnt now with pulmonary medicine, lung injury, infection inflammation, it is a black box,’ he said. Dhaliwal referred to acute respiratory
distress syndrome (ARDS) that has been studied for the last 20 years, with minimal advances in understanding and treating the disease. ‘Trials have failed for ARDS. A lot of drug companies were not interested in acute infection acute pathogenicity. Photonics can make a huge difference to changing that paradigm. We need to take photonics into the person,’ he said. As vaccinations are rolled out, Nielson said antibody testing will become more important, needing to be simple, low-cost and reliable. ‘Photonics could help with this development of rapid diagnostics for the assessment of antibodies,’ she said. This will also be crucial in low-resource
areas, where vaccines will be in limited supply, added Dr Neema Kaseje, of Doctors Without Borders, who has helped develop Covid-19 health strategies in Kenya. ‘In Kenya we have received one million doses of the vaccine and the population is 55 million. We will never receive 55 million
More advanced endoscopes are key for understanding better how diseases affect the lungs
doses, but if there is antibody testing, we could manage our resources more effectively, saving the vaccines for those with no antibodies,’ she said.
It comes down to trust For new technologies to be translated into clinics successfully, funding for diagnostics needs to be rethought, Garner reiterated, which is key for end-users to gain trust in new technologies. ‘There is funding to make that test, to
do the first 100 patients, but there is no funding to do a large-scale POC clinical trial,’ he said. ‘Until that issue is addressed, it’s very hard for clinicians to then look at what you have with new technology,
and trust that result. I run a gold-standard diagnostic laboratory and it is sometimes hard to trust the results coming out there. Because they just do not match what is going on diagnostically,’ Garner continued. ‘If you have a test that goes wrong once,
you’re already starting to lose the trust of the clinician, if you have a test that goes wrong 50 per cent of the time, that test is actually unusable. ‘If the funding is there to really study the
real-world application of these diagnostics, and to study it quickly – in a setting where you have a robust dataset – that is how we build trust,’ he said. ‘But it takes a change from the organisations that are providing that funding.’ EO
The Laser Safety Engineers Conformance to BS EN IEC 60825-1 Performance to ISO 13849-1 PL‘e’
•
• • • •
Laser safety enclosures for any size of optical table (std 600mm high) Flat packed for self assembly Interlock controlled
Rail mounted for easy access Removable End Panels
www.lasermet.com/lucas
Orcatina Curtains
Interlock Controllers Filter
Windows and
Eyewear LASER SAFETY TRAINING, LIVE, ONLINE... +44(0)1202 770740
office@lasermet.com
lasermet.com
LED Signs
Shutterstock.com
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
