rHEALTH Receives NIH RADx Funding to Advance Its Point-of-Care COVID Antigen Test for Schools, Businesses, and Group Settings
New Biden administration supports broadened testing efforts
BEDFORD, Mass., April 2, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- rHEALTH LLC, a Diagnose Yourself, AnywhereTM company, today announced that it has received funding support to advance its diagnostic technology from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADxSM) Tech program. The award is managed by Consortia of Improving Medicine with Innovation & Technology (CIMIT) and the NIH Point-of-Care Technologies Research Network (POCTRN), will be leveraged to oversee and help guide development, validation, and further advancement of rHEALTH's app-guided, user-friendly, high-sensitivity layperson antigen test. rHEALTH received the support after being vetted through a "Shark Tank"-like selection process.
The antigen test runs on a high-performance, user-friendly point-of-care analyzer called the rHEALTH, a patented, award-winning device funded by the NIH and NASA. A consumer-tested app guides the user through the testing sequence, which features minimal user touch points, and provides a result within 15 minutes for the user. The solution is differentiated in its ease-of-use, pandemic-mode throughput, and a high-sensitivity, cocktail-based antibody assay. The cocktail approach is designed to future-proof the technology against emerging variants.
"We are committed to working with the NIH to enhance efforts to diagnose COVID-19 in all settings. We aim to allow teachers, business owners, nursing home staff, and others to have more tools against the virus. The availability of a rapid, point-of-care antigen test for anyone to use is a particularly important means to attain widespread testing. Success of this approach means that these places with children, employees, seniors, and travelers will have greater safety, immediately," said Eugene Chan M.D., CEO of rHEALTH.
Launched in April 2020, the NIH RADx initiative received an initial $1.5 billion federal investment and has been an urgent call for science and engineering's most inventive and visionary minds to develop rapid, easy-to-use technology technologies for SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. In a September 2020 NIH news announcement regarding projects funded through the RADx initiative, NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. said, "Diagnostic testing is a critical component of the nation's strategy to meet the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic."
CIMIT and POCTRN are supported by the RADx Tech program and have been funded in part with federal funds from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Grant No. U54EB015408.
About rHEALTH®
rHEALTH is a company focused on the development and commercialization of its Diagnose Yourself, AnywhereTM technology. The rHEALTH technology is the subject of multiple XPRIZE awards, a NASA effort for astronaut health monitoring, and over a dozen issued patents. It enables diverse laboratory tests from a single tiny sample. rHEALTH has received support from CIMIT through the POCTRN program. For more information, visit http://www.rhealth.com.
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Media, rHEALTH, +1 (617) 913-7630, [email protected]
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