ASP Health and Planet Innovation have received the Bronze Award in the Testing and Diagnostic Product and Systems category at the 2022 Medical Design Excellence Awards (MDEA) for their innovative, FDA-registered automated sample preparation system.
The MDEA is the premier awards program for the med-tech industry, recognizing significant achievements in medical product design and engineering that improve the quality of healthcare delivery and accessibility, since its inception in 1998. Judging of each year’s MDEA competition is conducted by an impartial, multidisciplinary panel of expert jurors, comprised of clinicians, engineers and designers. Entries are judged on five criteria: design and engineering innovation, user-related innovations, benefits to overall healthcare, differentiation in the market and benefits to patients.
“PI measures our success by the success of our partners. This is the sort of collaborative partnership PI loves,” said PI North America President Anthony White.
“We’ve really enjoyed being able to work closely with a pioneering team helping to productize a novel solution to improve patient outcomes. The ASP Health platform addresses a real market need. It will make the ROSE procedure more reliable and efficient for hospitals and clinics, thereby improving the diagnosis process for cancer patients.”
Commenting on the award, Hari Subramanian, ASP Health’s EVP of Marketing and Product Development said, “Our focus is on meeting the needs of patients and healthcare professionals through the commercialization of our platform for use during Rapid On-Site Evaluation (ROSE) procedures.
“Our clinical advisors helped us each step of the way in providing valuable feedback on the usability of this system. They helped make the design extremely intuitive and easy to use with limited training. We believe this played a critical role in us being recognized by the MDEA,” he said.
ASP Health President and CEO John W. Hart added, “We are grateful for our multi-year collaboration with PI. They have helped us shape and execute the development of this product in line with our strategic plan, and we are honored to share this MDEA recognition with the PI team.”
The ROSE procedure evaluates the tissue sample acquired through fine-needle aspiration (FNA) to quickly determine if a sufficient sample has been obtained for evaluation by a hospital’s Cytopathology department. ROSE is growing in both use and importance throughout the United States despite the shortage of qualified clinicians.
Platform will help guide physicians’ decisions on cancer treatment options
The ASP System is ROSE ready and is designed to help physicians develop treatment plans tailored to the needs of each patient. ASP Health and Planet Innovation, conducted extensive market research to identify the need for the features that comprise the ASP System
- a mobile, automated instrument with a simple and intuitive user interface
- requisite consumables to reduce the risk of sample contamination
- retention of remaining sample in a collection vial for future evaluation; and
- the ability to complete the entire process in under two minutes
ASP Health and PI have worked together closely throughout the entire product development process – from the product-market fit analysis through early prototypes, to building the alpha and beta units, and now ramping up manufacturing for the instrument and consumables.
Clinically-significant features and benefits
The ASP System is fast, efficient, and able to deliver consistent, high-quality samples that are equal to, or better than, those prepared manually. The instrument is lightweight and portable, so it can be placed on a cart and easily moved into operating theatres as needed, with a simple workflow requiring only minimal training to operate.
For institutions that do not perform ROSE or have challenges in their current ROSE offering during fine-needle aspiration (FNA) procedures, the ASP System offers:
- quality samples that are equal to or better than current manual processes
- consistency and standardization to reduce the variability in sample preparation and to standardize protocols to enhance patient safety and workflow efficiency
- automation to reduce the pressure on cytotechnologists that prepare samples manually during a patient procedure
- an efficient process to ensure sample preparation does not prolong the physician’s FNA procedure and the patient’s time under anesthesia
- AI compatibility to enhance the evaluation and detection of cancer; and
- sample custody of clinically important specimens separated into individual collection vials for future molecular/genetic testing to guide downstream patient therapy
ASP Health introduced its novel system at the American Society of Cytopathology (ASC) 69th Annual Scientific Meeting in November 2021. For more information visit the ASP Health website.
