To reduce the incidence of infectious illness by providing to EU governments with a certificated tool that can be used by national programmes to quickly monitor and survey sources of pathogen contamination.
To improve the quality of the sanitary system by reducing hospital arrivals, hospitalisation time and diagnostic costs, by the use of low cost, portable and rapid diagnostic devices.
To increase competitiveness of European medical device manufacturing sector with a protected and disruptive technology that will be capable to fabricate and commercialise many other Lab-on-a-Card devices.
Technological objectives
To develop an instrument consisting of a hand held base unit and a cartridge or labcard that will carry out a Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction automatically from sample preparation to an optical detection. The labcard, made of a thick photoresist called SU-8, on a plastic film, contains all the disposable components, whereas the base unit has all the standard electronics and optics.
To use a thick photoresist (SU-8) as a structural material to fabricate each component within a Lab on a Card such as: micro-optical components, microfluidic channels, and microreactors. This will provide an affordable sensor platform, which can be utilised in a broad range of applications.
To improve and develop new technologies based on a thick photoresist treatment process that will increase its limits and enable the miniaturisation of needed processes for pathogen detection in a Lab on a Card.