Farming biotech making a big human difference
If it works for farm animals in remote parts of New Zealand, it should work for humans too, right?
It turns out that the answer is yes. A Mosgiel-based agritech company is using its biotechnology to help deliver diagnostics quickly to people living in rural or remote areas.
Techion’s Fecpak G2 testing device was developed to help farmers test livestock stool samples for parasites on farm, and it’s already being used for human stool testing abroad.
Now Techion is working with Awanui Labs, one of the country’s blood testers, to find ways of using the device for other kinds of human diagnostics in rural primary practices.
The Fecpak G2 is essentially a portable microscope, but it’s also digitally enabled. It can capture images of a sample, and send them to a cloud to be analysed by a technician, with help from artificial intelligence.
Techion managing director Greg Mirams said the business worked closely with farmers when he was designing the device.
“Our approach to farm management is if we have information, we can make better decisions.”
The Fecpak evolved from a simple microscope in a case, and removes the need to send samples away for testing.
New internet technologies – like Starlink – have connected even the most remote spots, but the Fecpak also stores images digitally so they can be uploaded later.
In December, Techion began working with Awanui – which is responsible for 70% of New Zealand’s blood testing – to use the Fecpak technology for other pathology and haematology tests, using Microsoft infrastructure to secure private patient records.
Mirams is excited about how the device and technology could be used in rural general practice.
“It addresses some of the health inequalities,” he said.
Often, samples taken in primary care have to be transported to the nearest laboratory, or patients have to travel for testing.
In a town like Te Anau, for example, that’s a two-hour drive to Invercargill or a 3½-hour drive to Dunedin for more complex testing.
Awanui Labs head of strategic business development Trevor English said samples could degrade over time. “That means people outside our biggest cities sometimes have to travel for these procedures, adding stress, inconvenience and cost. This approach has the potential to solve this issue, and also reduce the pressure on our urban-based teams and spread the testing load across our network,” he said.
The artificial intelligence also created benefits for the laboratory workforce, Mirams said, taking over the mundane or repetitive tasks that tended to put younger people off the joining the sector.
It was a system already being used for remote diagnosis in radiology, Mirams said.
An Awanui spokesperson said research was in its initial phases and once complete, would inform how and when Fecpak could be rolled out to regional New Zealand.
Fecpak is already being used by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Starworms research project in Asia, Africa and South America.
The STop Anthelminthic Resistant WORMS project uses the device to monitor the prevalence of parasitic worms and drug efficacy against them. It’s a collaboration between three World Health Organisation centres and multiple universities.
One of the researchers working on the project is Ghent University professor Bruno Levecke, from Belgium, who said the Fecpak offered an advantage over existing testing techniques in that the results were stored online as pictures, “making it easy to re-check if there is a question”.