Screen O/S
Minimizing the spread of COVID-19 through improved workplace health and safety.
Project Overview
Updated March 31, 2023.
The Problem
The World Health Organization estimates that up to 40 per cent of COVID-19 transmissions may come from people with pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic cases.
This is challenging for employers developing an effective return-to-work plan. With a soaring unemployment rate in Canada, the key is to re-open the economy in ways that protect employees and the public without straining the healthcare system or placing significant cost burdens on employers. Addressing this challenge entails social distancing measures, contact tracing and screening.
How We Are Solving It
In response, Gemina Labs (previously ecoMine) , a Vancouver-based biochemistry company, led a study to assess the feasibility of an innovative, low-cost, on-the-spot screening technology for the detection of COVID-19 in risk management frameworks for workplace safety. Following a successful two-month assessment, the company is now leading Screen O/S, a project initially focused on improved screening for the education sector and the film industry. With partners such as Nomadic Pictures, Patriot One and the University of British Columbia, the project brings together Canadian expertise in areas such as infectious diseases, virology, software engineering, secure networking and cloud computing.
The team is working on a one-stop solution for instantly screening pathogens with the ability to provide reliable and anonymized risk reporting to leaders and regulators, as well as secure and private results directly to students and employees.
Over time, the plan is to expand to other impacted areas such as healthcare, manufacturing, construction, transportation and resources.
The Result
This project focused on a solution for instantly screening pathogens to provide reliable and anonymized risk reporting to leaders and regulators, as well as secure and private results directly to individuals. The project developed an on-the-spot digital certificate through their digital application, Testpoint, which pairs a physical test with a mobile application and provides a digital risk management system for workplaces. This solution was successfully deployed at a food processing facility in Alberta, where an exposure risked the shutdown of the entire facility. The project also undertook the initial development of a proprietary saliva-based test that detects the COVID-19 virus in minutes. In February 2022 Gemina Labs announced that their test showed significantly higher sensitivity when compared with a panel of seven leading commercial rapid antigen tests with real patient samples.
Project Lead
Project Partners
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“This project has positioned Gemina Labs to be at the forefront of biosensing. By leveraging our word-class chemistry with advanced digital technologies we now have the launch pad to make meaningful impacts to human and environmental diagnostics”
Head of Digital Technology, Gemina Labs