Even post-vaccine, we still need rapid, error-free Covid-19 testing

Despite the vaccine rollout, it appears that Covid-19 will continue to be part of our lives for many years to come. In early April, the CEO of Pfizer said that people will likely require a booster dose within a year of getting fully vaccinated. Shortly thereafter, Moderna announced that it will make a third booster shot for its two-dose vaccine available to Americans by the fall. Indeed, it’s possible that we will all need to get a Covid shot annually, just as we do flu shots.

This means that testing for antigens and antibodies will continue to be of vital importance to ensure that we remain fully protected. It will also be necessary for both public and private entities to conduct rapid Covid-19 testing well into the future. Sports arenas, for example, may want to rapidly test ticket holders before they enter the venue. Airports may want to test passengers before they board a plane. And business may need to test their employees before they come to the office.

Antigen testing can be used to detect if a person has been infected with the Covid virus. And antibody testing, for its part, can be used to detect a person’s continued immunity to the disease, after having received a vaccine or after having contracted the virus and recovered.

Up to now, mass testing for Covid-19 has been costly and time-consuming, which has made it difficult to track and control the virus. That’s why it’s so important to develop an easy-to-use, lab-free Covid-19 test solution that can provide reliable results in a matter of minutes at the point of care.

In the case of antigen testing, ams OSRAM is taking an innovative approach by pairing spectral sensors with lateral flow and digital capabilities to create tests that are easy to read and error-free. Fluorescence sensing is used to effectively detect antigens in saliva samples and generate quick and rapid readouts at the earliest stages of infection, before symptoms have appeared. As opposed to the traditional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, which requires samples to be sent to a remote laboratory, our new test kit can be seamlessly incorporated into doctors’ offices and other point-of-care situations at a low cost and with immediate results.

These kinds of rapid, accurate and cost-effective mass-testing solutions can be game-changers by helping to get the virus under control and, ultimately, restarting the many economic and social activities that have been severely curtailed during the pandemic. In addition, the digital results of these antigen tests can be uploaded to a medical cloud for monitoring and tracking purposes.

Even as we all proceed to get vaccinated, there will be an ongoing need for rapid Covid-19 antibody testing to learn whether we are still immune and when it’s time to get our next booster shot. Innovative spectral sensor technology, in combination with lateral flow capabilities, can play a role here as well by enabling the detection of antibody information through tiny yet powerful optical sensors.

As ams OSRAM, we are partnering with a few different companies to create disposable electronic lateral flow assays designed to test for immunity against the Covid-19 virus based on antibody detection, as well as antigen testing to determine if someone is infected. The devices couple lateral flow technology with a spectral sensor to provide a readout that is accurate, cost-effective and quantitative. Just as important, the readout provides an objective result that is not subject to user interpretation.

ams OSRAM lateral flow diagram
Source: ams OSRAM

This sensor technology is currently being incorporated into small, accurate and easy-to-use Bluetooth-enabled hardware devices that can be seamlessly connected to a smartphone app. The raw data can be sent to a mobile device that transfers the data to the cloud for further evaluation to get a diagnostic result. The benefit here is that broad-based test-result information can become part of a national or international monitoring system, thus contributing to the fight against Covid-19 and limiting the spread of the virus.

The bottom line is that innovative spectral sensor technology is more important than ever for cutting-edge healthcare applications. Going forward, we see applications beyond Covid-19 for digital lateral flow solutions, including testing for other infectious diseases, cardiac markers, ovulation tests and more. This is an exciting time for the development of next-generation point-of-care medical tests that offer greater efficiency and accuracy, and the potential to dramatically improve human health and save lives.

Jennifer Zhao is executive vice president and general manager of advanced optical sensors at ams OSRAM.