The Stuttgart-based Foundation group, Bosch is especially in the car industry, but not in medical technology. Thus, it was in March, surprising, when Bosch came out with a molecular diagnostic Corona Test on the market that shows in less than two and a half hours after sample collection, the result. Now, the group goes one step further: Soon to be a Corona to follow Test that displays in less than 45 minutes, if the Tested has been infected with the Coronavirus attached. “We are nearing the completion of the development, and expect that we are able to offer the Test in June. For the beginning of August, the CE marking is planned,“ said Marc Meier, managing Director of Healthcare Solutions, in an interview with F. A. Z. Bosch CEO Volkmar Denner had announced at the annual press conference at the end of April, to want such a Test very soon to offer.
Ilka Kopplin
editor in the economy.
F. A. Z.
Both Corona-Tests use genetic material of a fully automatic method for the detection of Viruses, for which a swab from the nose or throat area is necessary. While the previous Test in addition to Corona checks on nine other diseases of the respiratory system, the purpose of the new Test on the Coronavirus. The test sample is given initially in a cartridge that already contains all the necessary reagents and a closed System. The cartridge is then inserted in turn in the Bosch over the years developed analysis device. Each analysis unit can always edit only one Test at a time. On the day the device costs a low five-digit Euro amount creates, from the previous Test ten samples from the new Test around 30 samples can be processed. The previous Test will cost a high double-digit Euro sum, the new Test is, according to Meier’s slightly cheaper and a middle two-digit Euro amount.
“The demand for our Sars-CoV-2-Tests is extremely high, and we are busy to meet the demand,” said Meier. The Tests could cannibalize, does not believe the Manager. In the flu season, which given up the Ghost again in the autumn, was likely the previous Test, other indications query also.
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The Test production is currently being expanded. This year, more than a Million Tests are to be made in the coming year it is expected to be three million. “We have designed our manufacturing plant in Waiblingen, so that we can produce the cartridges of the two Tests of flexibility,” said Meier. Despite the high demand, the production should not be expanded, however, to other locations: “We finished the Tests exclusively in the factory in Waiblingen, near Stuttgart, and plan to do so in the coming years.” Bosch aims with the analysis device, the needs according to the company, in the handling not particularly trained personnel, rather on the health care system, such use in hospitals, as it had explained Denner in the conversation with the F. A. Z. in the spring.
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A large part of the analysis will be actually used in hospitals, industrial companies were among the clients, as they tested their employees, said Meier, now. Even Bosch themselves use the devices in many locations. “The production of our analytical equipment is running at full speed. All of the devices that we manufacture currently, are sold in the following week again,“ said Meier. In a week’s time to produce a “medium double-digit” number, around 500 were in the market.
Bosch is just one of the many large and small companies in the world, the Corona-Tests offers. Diagnostics and medical technology corporations such as Roche, Siemens and Abbott put on huge machines that can process on an industrial scale of several thousand Tests of the day. Large laboratories with the appropriate throughput access to such devices. Bosch believes in their own System, which can process compared daily only a fraction of the Tests, the advantage of long transport routes, because of the sampling and analysis done in one place.
The medical-technical area, with 150 employees in the large Bosch group is relatively small. However, Meier has a lot of. “We have focused our authorisation processes in Germany and Europe and are currently working to get approval in the United States,” he said. In addition to stomach, in cooperation with various partners for the development of the biological components responsible, yet more Tests for the analysis of device impacts on e.g. fungal, intestinal or urinary tract disorders.