COVID-19 Diagnostics
Accurate on-site COVID-19 testing to resume life with confidence.
Karten Design worked with FastDetect to build a fully automated RT-PCR testing instrument, taking lab-grade accuracy out of the lab and onto the front lines, with results in under 20 minutes.
Client
FastDetect
Category
Diagnostics
Product
FD-1 SmartTest System
Services
Industrial Design
The Situation
RT-PCR Sample Pooling will speedup testing 5X
Safely reopening the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic meant one thing: well designed, efficient testing that regular people could actually use. Until FastDetect, that meant a trade-off, the speed of a rapid antigen test, or the accuracy of a lab-based RT-PCR test, never both.
Karten Design worked with FastDetect to quickly design a PCR testing instrument capable of delivering accurate results in under 20 minutes, fully automated, and built to move diagnostics out of the lab and into the places people actually gather: hotels, airports, stadiums. Speed to market wasn’t a preference here, it was the point.
The Solution
We leaned on our experience designing medical devices that look and operate like consumer products. The FD-1 system is sleek and simple by design, built from scratch to deliver fast, accurate testing outside a controlled lab environment. Using a process called sample pooling, it processes up to five tests at once instead of one at a time.
The workflow is intentionally consumer-simple: drop the nasal swab into a biosafe disposable cartridge, insert it into the instrument, press start. One fully automated swab-to-diagnosis path, no skilled lab operations like pipetting, and automatic data traceability and record-keeping built in.
We also designed for the reality of where this thing would actually live, extreme weather, large crowds, busy public spaces. The system sets up anywhere with power and WiFi, and results reach people through a secure, encrypted mobile app straight from the cloud. Karten Design worked embedded inside the FastDetect team to move fast without cutting corners, changing the economics of RT-PCR testing to just a few dollars per person.
What We Did
One discipline, moving at emergency speed
Industrial Design
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