Home drug monitoring · finger-prick · saliva
The weeks between visits, finally visible.
A two-minute test at home tells the care team three things: is the medicine being taken, how much of it is in the body, and is the body starting to react. Crystal reporters make it lab-grade from a single drop, with no background glow from blood or saliva.
The blind spot
Weeks of treatment nobody can see.
Modern medicines are measured at the clinic and then sent home. Between visits, nobody knows whether the drug was taken, how much of it is in the body, or whether a dangerous reaction is starting. Pill counts and diaries are self-reported, and drug levels need a venous draw, a centrifuge, cold shipping and a central lab.
Who really took it?
Skipped doses cause treatment failure, relapse and avoidable cost, and in a trial they quietly dilute the results.
How much is in the body?
Patients clear drugs at very different rates. Therapeutic drug monitoring fixes that, but today it is trapped in the lab.
Is a reaction starting?
Immune reactions and organ toxicity start with rising blood markers, often days before the patient feels sick enough to call.
The data loop
From a finger-prick to the care team.
The patient does a two-minute test at home on a schedule or when symptoms start. A pocket reader lights the crystals with an infrared laser and counts every line. The result is signed on the reader, sent securely, and lands on the dashboard of whoever is authorized to see it.
One reader · two ways to see a drug
Measure the medicine, or the marker that rides with it.
Large biologic drugs such as antibodies can be caught directly. Small-molecule pills are hard to measure on a strip, so a harmless marker peptide can be built into the pill itself and measured instead. The same reader runs both, and both together.
Direct drug monitoring
For antibody drugs, Fc-fusion proteins and antibody-drug conjugates. No change to the medicine at all.
A capture antibody made against the drug holds it on the line; a crystal-labeled antibody locks it in. Brightness is the drug level.
Marker-in-the-pill
For small molecules and anything hard to detect. A short peptide made only of D-amino acids, absent from the human body and resistant to enzymes, goes into the tablet coating, capsule or depot.
One crystal test for the marker works for every drug that carries it, so previously untrackable medicines can be verified at home.
Combined mode
Two readings that must agree.
Measuring the drug and its marker from the same cartridge makes the result very hard to fake. When they match, adherence is confirmed. When they split apart, the reader flags it: a tampered sample, an unusual metabolism, or a dose taken the wrong way.
Built for settings where proof matters: court-ordered and addiction treatment, mental-health therapy and tightly controlled trials.
Any sample, one reader
Swap the cartridge, keep the reader.
Finger-prick cartridges meter an exact volume and filter out red cells. Saliva cartridges compress the swab and even out its thickness. Urine cartridges read the drug’s breakdown products. All of them fit the same reader with no hardware change.
A hypothetical example
One home platform. Three high-impact therapies.
Imagine one drug company with three very different blockbusters: an immunotherapy for cancer, a multi-dose vaccine and a heart-failure pill. Each has a different blind spot between visits. The same reader, cartridge format and data pipeline serve all three; only the test lines change.
Catch the reaction before the hospital does.
- More central lab infrastructure
- More clinic visits for patients
- Any change to the drug or its approval
- Continuous, low-friction insight at home
- Objective, biological proof of adherence and response
- Longitudinal real-world evidence for safety, payers and new indications
Hypothetical illustration for discussion. Therapies are named by class only; no drug maker has endorsed or partnered on this example. Panels are design proposals, curves are illustrative, and none of this is a cleared medical test.
Who it is for
From the trial site to the kitchen table.
The same reader and cartridge format serve very different users, from a pharmaceutical sponsor to a caregiver or a patient who simply wants to show they are doing what the doctor ordered.
Decentralized trials
Pharmacokinetic and safety data collected at home, without site visits, widening who can join and who stays in.
Dose optimization
Antibody drugs, transplant and anti-seizure medicines dosed by the measured active level, not population estimates.
Proof before the refill
Objective adherence for very expensive biologics before the next high-cost refill is released.
Documented adherence
Caregiver alerts for elderly patients, and treatment, recovery and court programs that need objective proof a person is taking prescribed medication. Illicit drugs: see saliva drug screening.
Part of the smart bathroom
Saliva or urine read every morning, with no needle at all. See the smart bathroom →
Published · infliximab
A finger-prick as good as a blood draw.
Infliximab is an antibody drug for Crohn's disease and other inflammatory conditions, and patients do better when its blood level is kept above a minimum. Paul Corstjens and colleagues at Leiden University Medical Center built a crystal-reporter strip that measures it, published in 2013, then tested finger-prick blood against serum in a feasibility trial with Crohn's patients at LUMC.
Trough infliximab levels, tested immediately after collection. Redrawn from LUMC feasibility-trial data; point positions approximate. Reference ELISA: Sanquin blood bank.
Try it · two answers from one drop
Drug level and inflammation, together.
A participant pricks a finger every few days at home. The reader reports two things: is the drug in its target range, and is the inflammation panel quiet? Pick a scenario.
Illustration with invented values. Not clinical guidance and not a cleared test.
Try it · the full panel
Drug exposure. Immune response.
For a single medicine, strip A can be just two lines: the drug level and the antibodies the body makes against it. A trial that needs the whole picture runs both strips: six drug lines and six inflammation lines, read at once by the stationary reader.
Strip A · 6 linesDrug exposure
Levels of antibody drugs and the anti-drug antibodies that neutralize them.
Strip B · 6 linesImmune response
Cytokines that rise in infusion reactions and cytokine-release syndrome.
Illustration with invented values relative to each marker's decision level (white line); for drug levels, "low" means below the therapeutic range. Strip A markers other than infliximab are design targets.
What exists today
Honest about where we are.
Drug levels from a finger-prick are published and clinically tested. The full two-strip panel is the next step.
Cytokine tests on the platform
IFN-γ (2008) and IP-10 with CCL4 (2016) measured with crystal reporters in peer-reviewed studies.
Finger-prick quantitative strips
Fingerstick sampling and quantitative reading, used for years in leprosy and TB field programs.
Infliximab from a finger-prick
The 2013 infliximab assay, and a LUMC feasibility trial in 30 Crohn's patients showing finger-prick blood matches serum.
The home platform
The connected reader, the marker-in-the-pill peptide and the therapy panels on this page are designed, not yet built.
Partners wanted
Know the dose. Catch the reaction.
We are looking for pharmaceutical sponsors, contract research organizations and treatment programs to build drug-level and cytokine cartridges for specific medicines.
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.
