Sight Diagnostics, an OurCrowd portfolio company, is helping to lead the response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Sight’s OLO, a compact blood analyzer that can provide rapid, lab-grade CBC [complete blood count] results, has been installed in Sheba Tel Hashomer’s (Israel’s largest hospital that is supported by the government) special quarantined lab to support the management of COVID-19 patients to mitigate the risk of contamination.
OLO can now test samples of COVID-19 infected patients who are being monitored and treated in a separate field hospital.
“OLO’s compact design makes it easy to set up quickly in a setting reserved for testing only contagious blood samples. Eliminating the risks of processing these samples alongside regular lab samples is uniquely advantageous in managing outbreaks of highly infectious diseases,” explained Dr. Ram Doolman, Director of Sheba’s Laboratories Division and Automated Mega-Laboratory. “By setting up a quarantined lab that requires special protocols in handling samples from infected patients, we are taking the necessary steps to protect our staff who are on the frontlines, fighting the coronavirus epidemic.”
Yossi Pollak, CEO of Sight, said that typically taking a blood sample from an individual infected with a virus like COVID-19 would require a sample via needle, placing the blood in a vial and shipping these samples off to a lab.
“OLO gives health care providers the ability to use a self-contained cartridge to collect two drops of blood, from either a venous or finger prick sample, insert the cartridge into OLO, and receive CBC results in minutes. For health facilities in countries where OLO is available for point-of-care use, that tactical advantage could make a big difference in a field setting,” said Pollack.
In the United States, OLO is 510(k) cleared for use in moderate complexity laboratories but it has not yet been cleared for point-of-care use, according to the company.
OLO’s technology combines computer vision and AI to digitize each blood sample into more than 1,000 high-resolution images.
“We are planning to further develop our technology to diagnose serious conditions, including complications that stem from a viral infection, that have a distinct visual signature in the blood sample,” said Yochay Eshel, VP of R&D at Sight.
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