Innovate faster and bring your diagnostic product to market faster. That is exactly what the company SG Papertronics wants to achieve with their participation in the Open Diagnostics Ecosystem (ODE). As of 1 February, they will start a learning project to adapt their user-friendly laboratory analysis platform to work in the medical and point of care sectors. This is the second project that ODE has supervised since their start in April 2021. ODE aims to make the Northern Netherlands a global expert in the development of innovative diagnostics. Ton Vries, director of ODE:”At ODE we are very pleased that SG Papertronics has submitted a successful application to us and can now start their project. ODE’s network and knowledge is expected to prove as useful to SG Papertronics as it is to Detact Diagnostics, the company in our first project.
Platform technology
SG Papertronics, located in the Innolab Agrifood on Campus Groningen, have developed a mobile lab for craft beer brewers to measure and improve the quality of their beer, the Beer-O-Meter. This mobile lab democratizes laboratory testing allowing smaller brewers to measure the quality of their beer quickly and cost-efficiently themselves. As a result, they do not have to engage external, expensive labs to measure, for example, the bitterness or the alcohol percentage. The platform technology that SG Papertronics developed for the Beer-o-Meter forms the basis for the expansion that the company wants to develop for medical diagnostics in the project with ODE.
CEO Maciej Grajewski of SG Papertronics explains the purpose of their participation in ODE: “Our goal is to further develop the user-friendly way of analysis and quality control that we have already developed for the craft beer market and make it available for medical diagnostics. The market for medical diagnostic technology is growing strongly, due to the global need for fast and accurate tests. With our platform technology, parties will be able to easily develop and use their own specific diagnostic applications without the need for specialized laboratory equipment or highly trained staff to run the tests. This makes lab research accessible and affordable for everyone.” ODE’s network is of great importance in this respect, says COO Richard Rushby: “The size and quality of the network of companies, knowledge institutions, healthcare partners and facilities for open innovation such as the new Innolab Chemistry and Engineering will help us to accelerate our innovation process. New contacts, direct access and short lines of communication: that’s how we like to work.”
