Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1047182
18 SMT007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2018 And because you don't have to delay, treatment can start immediately. You wouldn't have to wait. Starting treatment is extremely important for over- coming any kind of disease. It will also have a huge impact in environments and countries where you don't have access to health-care facilities whatso- ever, such as remote islands or low- and middle-income coun- tries where you don't have access to health-care facili- ties with laboratories. In all of these cases, having a miniaturized laboratory can make a huge difference. This is roughly the vision of what we are trying to realize with our Research at the University of Bath. Barry Matties: The technology itself is really interesting because they're using these minia- ture micro-pumps to move fluid around, and the idea was to actually incorporate it into the build of the circuit board. And it's really a game-changer. What's interesting about this also is it's one and done, meaning you use it, you throw it away and you buy more. So, from a consumption point of view, millions and millions of units will be sold. And you've already had success in creating the lab onboard and doing diagnostics, correct? Moschou: Yes, we have. Matties: This really goes with the continued desire for smaller, faster electronics, more affordable, and it's going to revolutionize the way that medical diagnostics is done. Moschou: Exactly. What I have been driving for the past few years is trying to implement Lab- on-Chip technology on PCBs. At the moment, and ever since the invention of lab-on-a-chip, every research laboratory in the world has been using their own in-house technique to fabricate those devices. We don't have lab-on- a-chip technology with one way to manufac- ture things. In electronics, we have PCBs. We have the standard card that we all use to simulate and design boards, and manufacturers globally that have standardized procedures because this is an industry that's been around for many years. In lab-on-a-chip, this is not the case. We are still at the research stage and are gradually tran- sitioning into actual commer- cialization of devices the past few years. One of the problems delaying this process is that we don't have factories. We don't have a lab-on-a-chip factory where I can make something in my lab, design it, and then I can go and get millions of them. This is why I have been trying and persisting on the lab-on-PCB approach because we can actually use the factories that are out there right now fabricat- ing electronic boards and transition into some- thing more advanced—something smaller and more intelligent that can add further function- ality to the electronic boards. This time, we can incorporate miniaturized channels to trans- port the liquids and the fluids that we want to analyze, which are called microfluidic tunnels. We can have analytical biomedical devices on a PCB. This is not conceptual. I have been present- ing for the past few years on the projects and prototypes we have made. We started making things in the lab with PCB technology, but lately, I've been working with several manu- facturers around the world. I have shown several prototypes for many applications— mainly medical applications—involving DNA and protein detection for different cancer diag- noses. Currently, we are working in the lab on several of the prototypes for diagnosis. It's a proven concept. It can be done Las Marias: Thank you, Despina. Meanwhile, Tom and Kaspars, please tell us more about Vexos and your roles in the company. Tom Reilly: Sure. My name is Tom Reilly, and I'm the director of marketing and sales oper- Dr. Despina Moschou