Quadrant Biosciences is pleased to announce that our CEO and Founder, Rich Uhlig, has received The 2022 CNY Business Journal Excellence in Healthcare Award for Healthcare Innovator.
The Excellence in Healthcare Award for Healthcare Innovator honors a person or organization that is responsible for the discovery or development of a medical procedure, device or treatment that can save or improve lives for many people. By reading below, you can learn more about the hard work Uhlig and Quadrant Biosciences did to earn this prestigious award. To watch the ceremony, you can click the link here.
Quadrant’s creation of a COVID-19 Saliva Test was able to help fill a gap that existed for access to testing for COVID-19 in New York State. In December 2021, Quadrant was tasked by New York Governor Kathy Hochul to set up COVID-19 testing sites at SUNY campuses throughout the state to help combat the Omicron wave of COVID. Throughout January 2022, Quadrant did just that. Quadrant established more than 51 test sites on SUNY campuses throughout the state. To date, Quadrant has processed nearly 4 million tests since August 2020.
The January effort to combat Omicron would have been impossible without the innovation sparked two years earlier. At the start of the pandemic, Dr. Frank Middleton, a scientist at SUNY Upstate Medical University, who Quadrant partnered with for the development of novel saliva tests, realized that the sampling and collection method used to analyze non-coding RNA in saliva could be used for the detection of COVID-19, which is an RNA virus. There is an abundance of RNA in your saliva, and COVID sheds mRNA into your mouth during infection, making it possible to determine a positive or negative infection.
What followed was an intense effort to make a test that was sensitive and easy to use. That led to SUNY Upstate’s and Quadrant’s creation of the COVID-19 Saliva Test, a simple, non-invasive test that uses a saliva swab. As a result, it currently boasts the lowest limit of detection on the market, according to the FDA’s reference panel testing.
The test itself was only part of the process. Next, Quadrant solved another issue: how to get people their results. The solution was to establish Quadrant’s online platform for patients to access their results. This online application integrated with New York State’s ECLRS database for easier contact tracing throughout the pandemic. Which showcases yet another hurdle Quadrant overcame through ingenuity and determination.
Although the exact number of lives saved or made better would be impossible to quantify, Quadrant Biosciences has served the community well, processing nearly 4 million tests and counting for New York State residents.