Microfluidics is a core technology enabling significant reductions in sample volume, reagent consumption and overall device size coupled with extremely fast mixing, rapid heating and cooling and significantly reduced reaction times. This lab-on-a-chip approach is a particularly exciting development for medical device manufacturers that want to deploy their technologies in portable or hand-held formats for point-of-care diagnostics. In order to facilitate application of this microfluidic technology to in vitro diagnostic and bio-analytical instrumentation, Intertech Engineering Associates has formed a non-exclusive collaborative partnership with Dolomite Microfluidics. The Intertech / Dolomite team will work together to provide instrument and reagent manufacturers with microfluidic “engines” to automate sample testing. Microfluidic engines are sub-systems comprised of chips, valves, pumps, detectors and electronics, designed as a compact package to integrate into analytical systems according to customers' unique specifications. Device manufacturers that design these microfluidic engines into their devices can reduce time to market, with engines developed in compliance with the FDA design control regulations. This partnership will offer a low risk and rapid development path for medical device manufacturers who have been eager to realize the benefits of microfluidics in their new products, but have been uncertain of how to incorporate the technology and achieve the required regulatory approvals. Dolomite provides complete design and fabrication services for microfluidic chips, components, modules and systems, and provides rapid turnaround custom designs of microfluidic chips in glass, quartz, polymer and hybrid materials with available reaction surface modification and functionalization. Dolomite also has a product line of off-the-shelf products including fluidic interfaces, flow cells, pumps, valves, and detectors for short proof-of-principle and prototyping cycles using components that will lead directly to commercialization. Intertech provides engineering services to the medical and life science industries in software, electronics, and verification and validation engineering. Intertech's 25 years of experience in the medical device industry will be applied to collaborative projects to accelerate the development of software driven electromechanical microfluidic subsystems. Intertech's expertise in device regulatory issues will be leveraged to minimize the regulatory hurdles manufacturers face in verification / validation, or in managing and documenting a controlled design process. Dolomite represents the first of several technology solutions that Intertech plans to bring to the medical device industry.

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