The Pathatrix Auto halves the time needed to detect pathogens and is suitable for use by health-service laboratories and food-preparation organisations.
One of the first uses of the new product has been the pre-admission screening of elective hospital patients for the MRSA bacteria, thus preventing the introduction of the disease onto the wards.
The new Pathatrix Auto product, which supercedes an earlier, manual process, automatically tests food and other samples for the presence of target pathogens, quickly and efficiently, in the laboratory.
It does this by using magnetic antibody-coated beads that capture the target and are then washed and concentrated to enable rapid detection with a variety of different systems.
This process takes just 15 minutes and when coupled to sensitive detection systems can yield results in as little as two to six hours from receipt of the sample.
Validation trials have demonstrated that the Pathatrix Auto system is significantly more sensitive than many of the current standard methods, providing a more effective solution that quickly tests food and other samples.
Designedge's solution consists of five sample 'cassettes', each of which holds a plug-in cartridge of test consumables, housed in a sleek and streamlined moulding, styled in Matrix Microscience corporate colours.
The flexibility of the design concept is based on the ability to insert different testing 'kits' into the cassettes, depending on the test being carried out, thus the consumables and inserts used for health screening are different from those used in food testing.
Reflecting these differences, the product is labelled and branded to suit each market and the design of the moulding has taken into account the requirement to incorporate alternative product branding in each case.
It features a wipe-clean surface and touch-screen operation.
However, the short manufacturing runs, high surface quality, relatively large moulding size and close tolerances required of the external housing moulding could have posed a manufacturing challenge, which is why Designedge called on Midas Pattern, with which it worked previously on high quality, short production-run laboratory equipment.
Over the course of several meetings between the designers and Midas Pattern, the details of the housing moulding were refined to ensure trouble-free manufacturing and the best fit between the cassettes and the housing, as well as optimising the position and angle of the touchscreen, which, due to its location on the upper curved face, is not in the line of draw of the moulding.
The mouldings were manufactured using the Midas unique composite resin MRIM tooling process.
This uses a blend of laminated and cast resins, incorporating areas of CNC machined aluminium and steel to produce high-quality polyurethane mouldings in small batches, with short production lead times.
They can accommodate both thick and thin sections, square faces, undercuts and cast features.
They are QMS accredited to ISO9001:2000.
