While the pandemic continues to disrupt the world, one Melbourne company is triumphing.
Inventing new technologies, creating solutions, jobs and returning manufacturing to Australia while helping combat COVID.
Investment incubator fund, BRC is backing Australian businesses to help future-proof the local economy in the event of another COVID, or the next airborne outbreak.
The BRC Group develops and grows businesses with global potential, amplifying local innovation, producing local manufacturing, and creating new jobs.
BRC Group’s landmark investments
One thriving business backed by BRC is Port Melbourne-based 3DMEDiTech, which uses 3D printing to mass manufacture personalised medical devices, and is most recently behind MEDiSwab, a world-first COVID testing swab.
Currently, most of the globe’s gold standard diagnostic COVID testing is done via uncomfortable and invasive nasal swabbing.
The 3D printed MEDiSwab comes in two versions, an ultra-fine nasal swab considered the gold standard for sample collection and diagnostic viral testing, and most recently a newly designed saliva swab used in broader COVID (and SARS) surveillance testing.
3DMEDiTech’s MEDiSwab’s are patented, world-first designs and testing. The resultant papers show they are more comfortable than conventional nasal swabs.
The saliva MEDiSwab, used for surveillance testing, comfortably and accurately helps Australians to get back to a normal existence as testing continues across the community.
The MEDiSwab products are designed, developed and manufactured in Australia.
3DMEDiTech’s impact in the pandemic
Customers already include the Federal Government and various State Governments who purchased over two millionnasal swab testing kits, saliva swabs and saliva testing kits.
Orders of saliva testing kits are growing from various State Governments and private pathology labs for ongoing surveillance testing which will increase as borders reopen.
In February 2021, 80,000 MEDiSwabs were deployed during the Australian Open. Players and support staff were screened daily for COVID using the MEDiSwab saliva swab.
England’s £201.7 billion National Health Service and numerous other countries have also shown interest in this world-first Victorian technology.
“At the height of the pandemic, there were concerns with the shortages and efficacy of some of the COVID-testing swabs,” says Paul Docherty, founder of 3DMEDiTech.
“So, we partnered with a number of academic and medical institutions to develop a solution – and we ended up creating two!”
