Disease Response

Early detection is key, so it’s critical that biosurveillance and field-forward diagnostics are available.

Further, development of countermeasures like vaccines and therapeutics, and their effective distribution, is important to disease management.

We are proud to partner with teams developing crucial assays for use in disease response, like those developed for COVID-19.

The order of operations is to detect the disease in people (or animals for some diseases) as early as possible.

If things get worse, countries may ask for assistance when resources are not available or limited, as in remote locations or in the case of new diseases, usually through the Africa Union, WHO, and other trusted partners.

MRIGlobal’s response to these requests for assistance may include:

• Deploying Mobile Laboratories for advanced diagnostic and research capabilities
• Deploying Mobile Treatment Centers to bring patient care closer to the point of outbreak
• Building Isolation Hospitals to mitigate the outbreak and prevent further spread

The COVID-19 pandemic provided the opportunity for us to help accelerate disease response through advanced diagnostic tools. It enabled the rapid introduction of at-home testing with relatively easy “rapid” assays to help determine whether a person tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The pandemic also enabled telemedicine in a way that was slow to emerge previously. With tests in the hands of patients and then enabling their contact with a healthcare professional to help manage the disease case, healthcare improved worldwide, even in emerging countries with limited infrastructure.

Now, we are working on the future of at-home and field-forward diagnostic assays that can test for a variety of viruses, including COVID-19. This will have a profound impact on health management for people with other comorbidities like diabetes and autoimmune disorders.

Additionally, following our support for the response to the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, we developed our Athena mobile laboratories, which can be deployed around the world to support local and rapid response.

At the forefront of MRIGlobal’s disease response efforts is our mobile laboratories. In response to the Ebola outbreak, we engineered, deployed, and staffed labs outfitted with testing and diagnostic capabilities to aid in disease detection.

Building upon lessons learned, our team of engineers evolved mobile lab technology with our Athena Mobile Lab. Instead of using an ISO container as the basis of the design, our engineers created a fully customizable structure that greatly increases the laboratory’s capabilities. As a result, this lab improves work ergonomics, while still allowing for easy transport via trucks, boats, railcars, and airplanes.

We designed the Athena Mobile Lab to fill the need for a gold standard mobile model that allows diagnostic assays to be closer to a collection event. This allows researchers to promptly collect and assess the chemical, biological, biometric, or other evidence necessary to reach a diagnosis, decreasing the time between collection and test results.