Robotic platform for COVID-19 tests

Robotic technology, initially used to test for infections in vulnerable people, has been swiftly adopted for COVID-19 tests. Professor Paul Freemont and his co-workers, from the UK Dementia Research Institute, developed the technology to increase the UK’s capacity to test for COVID-19 significantly.

Currently, the UK is conducting ten-thousand tests daily; however, robotic technology can bolster this up to one-hundred-thousand examinations by the end of April.

Approximately one-thousand coronavirus samples can be processed by the robotic module within twelve hours, using the same COVID-19 tests used by the NHS. The platform is currently being approved and began testing samples at 2 NHS hospitals last week.

Furthermore, the state-of-the-art platform is not reliant on specific reagent suppliers, and therefore, is more resilient because different test kits can be practised on one platform.

The Group Leader, UK DRI’s Care Research and Technology Centre, Imperial College London and the University of Surrey, Professor Paul Freemont, stated: “Getting a platform like this up and running isn’t straightforward, there are a lot of things to account for that could be the difference between success and failure, like the reliability of supply chains for sample kits, reagents and other essential equipment. We have been diversifying and stress testing a range of supply lines to make sure our platform can be used to its fullest capacity. Importantly, working with Myra McClure’s Molecular Diagnostic Unit on the St. Mary’s Campus of Imperial College and Paul Randell from North West London Pathology, we were able to validate the whole process from receipt of clinical samples in their containment facility to the final virus detected or not detected result. The great thing about a modular platform is that it can be easily scaled up and put to use in more sites. It takes little space and needs only one trained person to operate it, meaning social distancing isn’t an issue.”