Emerging Matters
Boosting Point-of-Care Diagnosis Device Industry using Microfluidic Technology
15 Jan 2020
A joint lab between PerkinElmer Singapore and SIMTech
Point-of–Care (POC) diagnostics is an emerging market in healthcare. It decentralises diagnostic test from medical laboratories to bed-side, small clinics, pharmacies or even homes. POC devices allow care providers fast access to test
results enabling faster medical decisions and prescriptions reducing morbidity and mortality, as well as healthcare cost and time. A typical POC device is portable, self-contained, automated, affordable, and fast in sample-in-result-out
operation, for which microfluidic technology provides an ideal solution.
To address the fast growing market of POC device, PerkinElmer Singapore Pte Ltd (PKI) and Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), A*STAR has set up a joint lab to design and develop microfluidic-based POC diagnostic
devices. PerkinElmer Singapore, a multinational corporation, will expand its R&D footprint in diagnostics locally including the PKI-SIMTech Joint Lab by sharing and transferring best practices to Singapore for POC product
development, clinical study and commercialisation. SIMTech Microfluidics Foundry (SMF) spearheads innovations in value creation of polymer microfluidics manufacturing and provides design, prototyping and production services for
microfluidics development and applications to productise microfluidic-based medical device from lab bench to pilot production lines. Adding up to the two strong parties of the joint lab, DxD Hub, A*STAR participates in the optimisation
and validation with whole blood samples, and subsequent analytical verification and validation (AV & V) of the systems to be developed in the joint lab.
The PerkinElmer-SIMTech Joint Lab, in addressing the various aspects of the POC device chain and involving the Precision Engineering industry in Singapore, will grow a strong local ecosystem to compete in global diagnostic device market
Mr Johnson Zhang, Vice President and General Manager, Diagnostics, Asia-Pacific for PerkinElmer
The PKI-SIMTech Joint Lab is part of the effort of SIMTech to establish the local R&D ecosystem, spanning from diagnostic product design and development to diagnostic product mass production by working on both demand and supplier
aspects. On the demand aspect, two fundamental capabilities in diagnostic device development will be established by developing function library and microfluidic POC devices platforms for detection of protein markers and for nucleic acid
in whole blood samples. The supplier aspect develops scalable manufacturing technology of disposable chips/cassettes for diagnostic products and transfer to the local precision engineering (PE) companies for design verification,
validation and production of diagnostic products. The PKI-SIMTech Joint Lab is expected to boost the local diagnostic device industry by attracting foreign companies and nurturing start-ups to set up R&D activities in Singapore.