DisposableDx · Patent pending
The lab, folded into a single-use patch.
A painless microneedle draws about a microliter of fluid. Tiny channels move it to dried crystal reagents. A built-in laser lights them, and they answer in a color the body never makes on its own. The result shows on the patch, or on your phone.
The point-of-care paradox
Cheap, or sensitive. Until now.
Today you choose. A disposable strip is cheap and needs no reader, but it wants a lot of sample and mostly answers yes or no. An optical lab reader gives real numbers, but needs a blood draw and an expensive instrument. DisposableDx puts the lab's optics inside the disposable.
Disposable strips
- Cheap and single-use
- No reader needed
- Larger sample volumes
- Mostly qualitative, lower sensitivity
Lab optical readers
- Quantitative and sensitive
- Painful venous blood draw
- Expensive, bulky instrument
- Not where the patient is
| Disposable strips | Lab optical readers | DisposableDx | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sample volume | Tens of microliters or more | Milliliters | About 1 µL |
| Sensitivity | Low, mostly yes/no | High, quantitative | High, quantitative |
| How the sample is taken | Finger-prick or swab | Venous draw | Painless microneedles |
| Reader | None | Expensive, separate | Built into the patch |
| Background glow | High | Managed in the lab | Near zero (upconversion) |
The sample's journey
From skin to signal in five steps.
Everything happens inside one sealed, single-use patch. No pipettes, no pumps, no separate instrument. Press a step, or let it play.
Shattering the volume barrier
A hundred times less sample.
Lab multiplex tests typically need 50 to 100 microliters; a venous tube holds milliliters. DisposableDx is designed for about a microliter, small enough to collect painlessly through the skin, again and again, which is what turns one-off testing into continuous tracking.
Drops drawn to scale as spheres.
The optical engine
A phone's laser. A crystal's light.
The light source is a VCSEL, the same kind of tiny, mass-produced near-infrared laser that phones use for face recognition. Small, cheap and low-power enough to live inside a disposable. Our rare-earth crystals turn its invisible 940 nm pulses into visible light, and because skin, blood and plastic do not upconvert, there is almost no background to fight.
Wait, then look.
The laser pulses, then switches off. Any stray light fades in nanoseconds; the crystals keep glowing far longer. The detector opens its window only after the wait, so it sees the crystals and nothing else.
Illustration of time-gated detection.
Built for single use
Powered and read three ways.
The same cartridge can be built for the cheapest screening test or for connected, quantitative monitoring.
One cartridge, many questions
Same patch. Swap the chemistry.
The hardware stays the same; only the dried reagents change. That is what lets one platform serve many of our applications.
Intellectual property
Patent pending. The whole system.
Each part exists somewhere on its own. The invention is putting them together in one disposable: painless microneedle sampling, ultra-low-volume microfluidics, upconverting crystal reporters and an integrated light source, read without any external laboratory equipment.
DisposableDx is a concept in development with NovaVera and is not a cleared medical device. A U.S. patent application covering the integrated system is pending.
One platform, three worlds
People, animals and the environment.
The patch is a sampling front end bolted to the same optical engine. Swap the front end and the same disposable works on skin, on an animal or on a swab from a surface or a water sample.
The third wave of diagnostics
The sensitivity of a lab. The price of a strip.
We are looking for diagnostic, pharmaceutical and device partners to bring DisposableDx to specific tests.
All diagnostics programs
One reporter. People, animals and the environment.
See the overview and readiness map →Intelligent Material Solutions invents the crystals and holds the intellectual property; NovaVera Corp. makes and sells them under an exclusive license. The field-proven lateral-flow tests are for research use only. Everything marked in development or concept is not a cleared medical, veterinary or environmental test; any product would need validation and, where required, regulatory clearance.
