éclateral: Leading innovation in accessible lateral flow testing

Inspired by a Royal National Institute for the Blind campaign highlighting the inaccessibility of pregnancy tests for people who cannot see, co-founder Paul Ko Ferrigno shares with us the genesis and growth of éclateral.

“The campaign showed that the woman doing the test was going to be the second person to find out the result,” he explains, “which I think is completely unacceptable. That’s where the idea came to marry biology with electronics, but we didn’t get funding for the idea until Covid hit.”

éclateral are now working with lateral flow tests (LFTs) to pass an electrical current through the test and control lines to give everyone a clear result. The results are sent to an app via Bluetooth, which can then provide the results in a variety of accessible ways, including reading them aloud.

Making LFTs accessible

Why we need LFTs

“What happened during Covid”, says Paul, “is that people took the test and then threw it away without logging it online, so the population-level data was inaccurate. This takes away the need for people to log it. And we’re able to create all of this at very low cost.”

As well as making the tests more accessible, the system also allows people to manage certain symptoms from home, even when a doctor’s opinion is needed, by sending the result to the GP rather than displaying it to the patient. Paul continues:

“It could also allow people to test at home for bacterial infections, cutting down the need for doctor’s visits and giving a more accurate reading as to whether a patient needs antibiotics. And another use case we’re thinking about is men with a diagnosis of prostate cancer.