The Food and Drug Administration has approved emergency use of the first rapid COVID-19 test developed by a Hawaiʻi company.
Patrick Sullivan, president and CEO of Oceanit, says the company began working on a saliva spit test but switched to a shallow nasal swab for easier use.
ASSURE-100 was developed using artificial intelligence and is manufactured in South Korea.
Sullivan says the FDA approval is validation after a long tough road.
"This is the first of many things we plan to do. We created a platform technology," Sullivan said. "We originally set out to look at diseases like cancer, we have a toolset for that. So our goal is really to address those issues."
"But when the pandemic hit, we asked ourselves, what can we do to help make a difference and a rapid test is what we came up with, and took us a while to get there. Hawaiʻi doesn't have a lot of the infrastructure but we were determined to do it," he said.
Sullivan applauded his team for bringing the breakthrough science to market.
Oceanit said its ASSURE-100 rapid antigen test for COVID-19 produces results in minutes.
This interview aired on The Conversation on March 1, 2022. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
