The company has received a prestigious Guldpillret (Golden Pill) award for its home blood sampling device.
Established by Läkemedelsförsäkringen, the prize is awarded annually to highlight the need for better and safer use of medicines.
“The fact that we won “Guldpillret” among 10 nominees, is confirmation that our system for sampling dried blood has a bright future ahead with the potential to greatly improve blood sampling for diagnosing patients in healthcare,” says Niclas Roxhed, associate professor at the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, in Stockholm.
The device has really come into own during the pandemic
Self-sampling with the Capitainer qDBS collection device has really come into own during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was deployed in northern Sweden to enable residents to send in their own blood samples in a safe and convenient way for COVID-19 antibody testing. Studies performed by the Public Health Agency of Sweden and Region Västerbotten show that over 94% of qDBS cards returned to the lab met the quality standard required for proper clinical diagnosis, states the company.
“We are extremely proud to have been awarded this prize. In collaboration with leading clinical laboratories, preparations have been under way for some time to make the sampling system widely available to the healthcare system. Our goal is to be able to offer antibody testing for Covid-19 as the first clinical indication already later this month. We collaborate with the country’s largest Covid laboratory, ABC Labs. Hence, the test will be available to healthcare providers in all regions of Sweden,” says Christopher Aulin, CEO of Capitainer.
The award committee’s rationale
“This year’s winner is an innovative product that enables patients to provide quality-assured dried blood samples for follow-up of drug treatment. The sample is precisely volume-determined, and drug concentrations and other analytes can therefore be measured with great accuracy. The method has had a breakthrough during the pandemic and in the long term there is an even greater potential and scalability for it to be used for broad screening programs and follow-up studies in large patient populations in certain risk groups. The work demonstrates the power of collaboration between innovative, basic research and entrepreneurship.”
Photo: Capitainer
