Scaling Up to Quickly Advance COVID-19 Point-of-Care Testing Technologies

This Year, We’ve Doubled Our Staff To Meet Demand For Sars-cov-2 Rapid Detection And Diagnostic Devices

COVID-19 point-of-care (POC) tests enable rapid detection and diagnosis outside hospitals or physicians’ offices, providing results within minutes. Speed, accuracy, and test availability are cornerstones in preventing the spread of COVID-19. As demand for point of care testing surged, top manufacturers tapped us to design custom optical systems supporting rapid testing based on molecular, antigen, or antibody detection. To address the increased demand, FISBA doubled its staff to meet aggressive product development schedules.

Many rapid tests rely on fluorescence detection using a lens precisely aligned to a CMOS image sensor. Here, the field-of-view, depth-of-field, and lens f/# are crucial to achieving the required performance. The specification and design of the fluorescence excitation and emission filters are also key to the device performance. A common problem in fluorescence detection is an angular mismatch, leading to a bleed-through of light, which degrades the system’s signal-to-noise ratio. Our team met these challenges, designing the diagnostic device’s precision optical components for manufacturing at scale.

Founder Dan Gray said, “Our mission is to help customers develop life sciences and medical device products that directly improve patients’ lives. I’m proud of this organization’s ability to rise to meet the urgent need, and we are committed to solving our customers’ challenges by expanding our capabilities and services.”

FISBA is already planning for significant growth in staff and facility space in 2021 to advance imaging technologies that build on their core capabilities: product development for biomedical and industrial applications through rapid prototyping, optical engineering, precision optical assembly and alignment, and custom test development.

If you’re interested in custom optical system design for life sciences applications, contact our team today.