GuideWell helped launch the contest that asked global innovators to develop effective, radically affordable COVID-19 testing amid the pandemic
XPRIZE, the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, is pleased to announce today the five winning teams in the $6M XPRIZE Rapid Covid Testing competition, with each winner creating high-quality, affordable COVID-19 testing to help society safely reopen and return to everyday activities.
GuideWell Mutual Holding Corporation (GuideWell), the parent to a family of forward-thinking companies focused on transforming health care was a founding partner of this challenge. GuideWell, in collaboration with XPRIZE, OpenCovidScreen, as well as other innovative organizations announced the competition in July to encourage the world’s most innovative individuals and organizations to develop new testing methods.
Chosen by an independent panel of judges, the grand prize winning solutions are radically affordable compared to what is currently available on the market; and are comparable to commercial offerings at measuring sensitivity, specificity and limit of detection, with a maximum turnaround time of 12 hours from sample to result.
The winning teams are:
● Reliable LFC, LLC, Antigen Testing, Carlsbad, United States
● ChromaCode, RNA Testing, Carlsbad, United States
● Mirimus, RNA Testing, Brooklyn, United States
● La Jolla Institute for Immunology, RNA Testing, La Jolla, United States
● Alveo Technologies, RNA Testing, Alameda, United States
“This is one more exciting advancement in our battle to defeat COVID-19. Innovation in health care – especially during the global pandemic – is paramount in order to increase access and affordability to care,” said Camille Harrison, executive vice president, Medicare and chief innovation and experience officer. “These innovators are helping drive down costs through their testing solutions and GuideWell is proud to be a partner in helping bring these solutions to life.”
“We are thrilled to announce the winners of the XPRIZE Rapid COVID Testing, which awarded multiple winners with unique testing solutions to help prevent future supply chain problems,” said Anousheh Ansari, CEO of XPRIZE. “We started this journey to ensure communities across the globe have access to fast, affordable, and easy-to-use COVID-19 tests. We are grateful to have the best entrepreneurial and scientific teams on board to help bring their solutions to scale so we can properly reopen schools, businesses, and other vital institutions around the world.”
Following the December finalist announcements, the 20 teams sent their testing kits and protocols to two separate laboratories, for clinical validation. The independent judges, composed of diverse experts in the healthcare and COVID-19 space, reviewed each team’s lab results, testing concepts, and proposals before deciding on the winners.
“While vaccines are important, we cannot rely on them alone to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and future outbreaks, especially not until they are provided around the world, en masse and at-scale,” said Jeff Huber, president & co-founder of OpenCovidScreen. “These technological breakthroughs in rapid covid testing are providing a safety net to ensure the spread of the disease is contained and to enable a safe return to work and school, and to protect hotspots like nursing homes. These advancements are key to helping underserved, under-resourced communities get access to affordable, accurate tests and to ultimately save more lives now and in the future.”
Additionally, four other teams were selected as winners in the Open Innovation Track, whose approaches demonstrated high potential for impactful screening solutions, but could not be categorized as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), Isothermal Amplification, Next Generation Sequencing, or Antigen Detection and could not be tested through the competition rounds.
The four winning teams in the Open Innovation Track are:
● Steradian Technologies, Inc., Houston, United States
● U-smell-it, Guilford, United States
● Ram Global, Zweibrücken, Germany
● TeraGroup, Herzliya, Israel
This prize comes out of the XPRIZE Pandemic Alliance to bring researchers, innovators, institutions, corporations, and governments together to share ideas and resources in the fight against the current and future pandemics.
Teams will work the remainder of the year to accelerate the adoption of their solutions on a massive scale. XPRIZE will oversee the development of a multimedia playbook documenting the testing protocols, plans implemented and lessons learned at deployment sites where this incredible testing technology will be rolled out. XPRIZE is currently inviting communities like schools, offices, factories, nursing homes, homeless shelters, and other communities to apply to be part of this innovative roll-out.
For more information and to apply to be a deployment site, visit here.