Sudbury-based biotech company Verv Technologies has received $500,000 in provincial funding to further develop its at-home blood analyzer.
The company said the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund capital would enable it to move its product closer to commercialization.
“This funding will further help Verv Technologies get our groundbreaking, home-based blood testing technologies to consumers quicker,” Victoria Coleman, Verv's vice-president of business development, said in a Sept. 3 news release.
“Our goal is to enable all people the ability to take control of their health and wellness and make valuable decisions regarding their lifestyle from objective findings. Before our technology was developed, analyzing blood at home just wasn’t possible, but with our technology, it will be done now, with just a few finger pricks of blood.”
Verv's president, Jeff Sutton, first came up with the idea a decade ago and has since thrown his energy behind developing the technology and a resulting prototype, called the Verv Vi.
To conduct a blood test, a user places a drop of blood onto a disposable test strip, which is then inserted into the Vi.
Verv’s technology separates the plasma from whole blood, conducts an analysis, and delivers the results via an app to your smartphone just 15 minutes later.
Users can test for anything from vitamin D to glucose to cholesterol to C-reactive proteins.
“We’ve now had interest and support from every level of government, and this financial support by the NOFHC is a show of confidence in our innovation and scalability," Coleman said.
“We’re poised for serious growth in the very near future.”
The company announced earlier this year it had engaged Cortex Design, a Toronto-based design firm specializing in medical and consumer products, to come up with a concept for the Vi.
Verv has said it expects the product to be available commercially in 2022.
