Our ThEA Platform is biochemical free—it’s contactless, portable, completely digital, and extremely user-friendly. With a ThEA readout system, anyone can test for any virus anywhere.

The sooner we detect a viral infection, the sooner we can take care of patients and prevent the spread to others. The best way to do that is with a quick, reliable test. The ThEA Platform will provide fast, accurate results even before a patient exhibits symptoms of infection. With widespread use, the ThEA Platform can help curb rapid spread of disease and help ensure better care by easing pressure on our overburdened health care system.

Conventional biochemical tests for viral infection have limitations. For starters, the sample has to have a high level of the virus and the antibodies that the body’s immune system makes to fight the virus, in order to trigger a positive result. This means you can have the virus for days before these tests can detect it. Plus, they’re expensive and take hours–sometimes days–to deliver results. They also require specialized labs to be processed. And, because the process is biochemical in nature, it is subject to environmental factors that can contribute to a high percentage of false negative or false positive results. In fact, many commonly used SARS-Cov-2 testing platforms achieve sensitivities of less than 80%, even when there is a low CT value. 

Other testing options available, such as X-ray and CT Scans are more sensitive than biochemical tests, but there are far fewer of them available and they are even more expensive. They still require the disease to be fairly far along in order to detect it. 

To help solve this problem, we decided to take our proprietary Terahertz Express Analyzer Sensing technology and next-generation sensors and apply them to a diagnostic platform. 

Because our process is digital, it requires no labs, no chemicals, and gives no chance for transport or environmental factors, such as temperature change, to affect the process. Altogether, that adds up to a high sensitivity rate. In fact, the platform is so sensitive, it can tell the difference between different strains of the same virus, giving healthcare workers vital insights into virus mutations.

Our system is comprised of two parts: first, the ThEA portable readout system—a user-friendly, cloud-connected interface—and second, a test kit that holds a patient sample, such as a simple throat swab. Insert the kit into the ThEA and in less than 2 minutes, you’ll know if a patient is infected or virus free. Because the kit is housed in an industry standard, eco-conscious plastic case, it’s very affordable and easy to manufacture and distribute. And because the kit is single use, it’s very sanitary.

The ThEA portable readout system itself, however, will become a permanent addition to the healthcare provider’s infrastructure. The ThEA platform can be used thousands of times to diagnose any number of pathogens, including COVID-19 coronavirus. When deployed at scale, the highly-portable ThEA Platform and test kits can be used to rapidly screen people during a viral outbreak – quickly differentiating between patients who need to be treated and persons who are safe to go about their day. Its versatility makes it an ideal asset for medical professionals in situations ranging from the common to the extraordinary. 

The ThEA Platform automatically backs up information to a cloud-connected database that can be shared by healthcare providers, agencies, local, state, and federal authorities. This digitalization could make it easier than ever to track the progress of an outbreak, eliminate redundant testing, and to create “exposure trees” that detail who the patients have interacted with since their infection. Armed with this knowledge, health officials could quickly ascertain who else needs to be tested, who should be treated or isolated, and who can safely continue their normal activities. This could help greatly reduce the need for a societal shutdown in the case of future pandemics.