Imperial COVID-19 testing facilities
Challenge
As the COVID-19 pandemic struck, additional facilities were required to ramp up the diagnostic testing capacity for the UK.
Solutions:
The Testing Alliance, set up by life sciences cluster MedCity, brought together world-leading universities, healthcare institutes, industry and pathology service providers to help increase COVID-19 testing capacity by 20,500 per day.
Imperial’s contribution was launched at St Mary’s Campus and includes the UKAS accredited Molecular Diagnostic Unit (MDU), led by Professor Myra McClure, and Professor Paul Freemont’s existing high-throughput robotic platform for RNA extraction.
This expanded facility created over fifty new positions, and joined Health Service Laboratories in partnership with UCL, King’s Health Partners, and Queen Mary University of London to form part of the Department of Health and Social Care’s partnership with MedCity’s London Testing Alliance.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, colleagues throughout Imperial have been doing all they can to make the world safer from COVID-19. I am delighted that, thanks to MedCity, Imperial has been able to come together with our peer institutions in London to help meet the critical need for increased COVID-19 testing capacity.” Professor Alice Gast, Imperial President
Professor Paul Freemont had already re-purposed the high-throughput robotic platform to help NHS diagnostic labs avoid bottlenecks caused by increased demand for reagents. The platform is reagent-agnostic, providing flexibility to respond to supply disruptions, is highly scalable, and does not compete for access to commercial kits.
“We recognised early on that we needed to work shoulder to shoulder with our colleagues in the NHS to ensure we could get them something that was workable in their labs.” Professor Paul Freemont
Related news stories:
Robotic testing platform helps to scale up COVID-19 testing capacity
MedCity-led university Testing Alliance to offer 20,500 extra daily COVID-19 tests
Imperial part of London Alliance offering 20,500 more COVID tests a day by March
Imperial’s new COVID-19 testing lab goes live
Capacity and capability building, large-scale testing and co-branding initiatives
Imperial’s COVID-19 testing facility is supported by project management professionals from the Imperial Projects team. To discuss similar large-scale projects, please feel free to contact us.
Share post:
Related case studies
Putting science into Sci-Fi
When Left Bank Pictures (producers of The Crown and Lost) were looking for someone to give their Sci fi adventure, ORIGIN, a touch of realism - they called upon Imperial Consultants. Thanks to his previous work with filmmakers, writers and artists, they were introduced to Dr Roberto Trotta, a theoretical cosmologist renowned for taking on the unusual - and gifted in translating ‘science-speak’ into layman’s terms. read more
Virtual worlds for real-life problems
Our consultants shared their expertise in new media applications in healthcare to help introduce the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center chemotherapy clinic staff and patients to a virtual world equivalent using the open source Second Life application. read more
Discovery Channel’s ‘Breaking Magic’
Dr Roberto Trotta provided scientific expertise to the production team of ‘Breaking Magic’, which airs on the Discovery Channel. read more