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Ever since our first investment in 2020, our long-term vision for Orbis Diagnostics has been that it could be the solution to a multi-billion-dollar, global problem. Here’s why we invested.
The societal challenge Orbis is seeking to address:
Diagnostic blood tests are an essential part of treating health issues and preventing disease. Understanding and recognizing a health complaint is almost impossible without a diagnostic test, yet, for many people, accessing a full-service medical lab can be a challenge. For others, the challenge becomes the timeliness and efficiency of diagnosis and treatment.
Overcoming these challenges is helped by point-of-care diagnostic platforms, but the issue with most of these is they’re incapable of producing blood test results comparable to what a complex medical laboratory can provide.
Orbis Diagnostics’ vision is to join ‘point of care’ with ‘lab-quality’ and offer it in one platform.
The technology in a nutshell:
Orbis Diagnostics is commercialising a desktop-sized medical testing platform that achieves scalability, accuracy, quantification, and robust repeatability of a medical lab test in a 15-minute test that can rapidly be deployed at the point of care. Orbis’ technology will allow for the accessibility of healthcare in areas where it is impracticable to access a full-service medical lab.
At the core of Orbis Diagnostics’ technology is lab quality, point of care diagnostics, and the opportunity is to take the benefits of a central laboratory and deliver them in a point-of-care setting, such as a doctor’s office, pharmacy, or other suitable location, to enable a standard set of blood tests to be completed immediately prior to consultation.
Orbis’ platform technology can also be applied to several other applications, including large and companion animal health, emergency rooms, cruise ships and remote areas.
The case for lab-quality, point-of-care diagnostics:
How many times do you visit the doctor and then get sent off for a blood test so they can really understand and get to the bottom of what’s going on?
Diagnostic testing data is required for around 70% of the decisions that are made about our health.
But the process of leaving the doctor’s room, going to a clinic to get a blood test, and then returning to the doctor for a consultation is, while relatively simple, a highly inefficient process both in terms of our own time and also starting relevant treatment. And what about rural and transient communities, or underserved groups who struggle to access medical labs capable of running the tests?
The question quickly becomes: ‘how do we screen quickly and efficiently to improve health outcomes?’
The prevalence of the underserved market will, in our view, scale significantly. Unless diagnostic solutions are developed to address the unique needs of these populations, the future of our health will be further compromised.
Examining the opportunity:
While point-of-care testing is not new – think about home pregnancy tests, blood glucose monitoring, and more recently, Covid-19 rapid antigen tests, the challenge with most of these systems is they test for a single biomarker or only a collection of similar tests, making them unsuitable to replace the central laboratory for the standard set of blood tests.
Orbis intends to combine the ability to automate the testing of antibodies, antigens, enzymes, and blood chemistry, rapidly, from a pin-prick of blood, and with the same quality as a central laboratory.
Because Orbis’ platform is designed to deliver the vision of lab-based outputs i.e., test for a panel of different biomarkers, but in a miniaturised version at point-of-care, they’re targeting a large, underserved market while also making interactions with health professionals more meaningful, which is critical as we shift globally to a telehealth model, an area which has grown exponentially during the recent pandemic.
Orbis’ technology is unique, has demonstrable benefits, and, importantly, is protectable. The strength of the company’s R&D team, leadership and founders are the basis for our investment.
