– I hope and believe that my experience will contribute to Prolight Diagnostics' business development and market launch.
Prolight Diagnostics is developing a point-of-care analysis system that can measure and detect biomarkers at very low levels. The analysis requires only a drop of blood and provides results in approximately 10 minutes.
– The unique digital technology that counts individual molecules from a drop of blood could very likely become a game-changer in the IVD POC market, says Kiarash Farr.
The system is called Psyros and is initially being developed for measuring troponin to detect or rule out heart attacks. In the longer term, Kiarash sees great opportunities for new innovation in many other clinical areas than just cardiac diagnostics.
– This is an incredibly interesting paradigm shift in point-of-care diagnostics. Today, many biomarkers can only be analyzed in highly specialized laboratories that could instead be moved closer to the patient on the Psyro system. There is a great need for fast, cost-effective test results that can be trusted.
Kiarash Farr was elected at the Annual General Meeting
Kiarash Farr was elected as a new board member at Prolight Diagnostics' annual general meeting on May 27. Kiarash is currently Senior Vice President Commercial Operations at Boule DiagnosticsPreviously, he was Senior Director of Commercial Operations in EMEA at Hycor Biomedical which manufactures and sells in vitro diagnostic products. He has also held roles focusing on sales and business development at Thermo Fisher Scientific, IBA and Scanditronix.
Kiarash Farr shares what he hopes to contribute to the Prolight Diagnostics board:
– I hope that my international experiences in strategic partnerships, business development, sales and marketing and product launches will contribute to Prolight Diagnostics' future partnerships, business development and a successful commercial launch.
In addition to Kiarash, Prolight Diagnostics' board consists of Chairman Masoud Khayyam, the board members Maria Holmlund, Ulf Bladin, Steve Ross, Aileen McGettrick and Tobias Volker.
– As part of the experienced and competent board of Prolight Diagnostics, I also look forward to contributing to the global positioning of the product, from a strategic perspective, for the benefit of both customers and shareholders.
Great need for fast and safe POC systems
Kiarash further explains that interest and acceptance for POC tests increased significantly during and after the Covid pandemic. However, there is still a great need for fast and accurate point-of-care tests and better analysis systems. Prolight Diagnostics' product solution where individual troponin molecules can be counted digitally enables a suspected heart attack to be detected or ruled out early in the care chain, which in turn can lead to significant resource and cost savings for the highly burdened healthcare system.
– Prolight has very great potential in the PoC market thanks to the proprietary, unique POC technology that enables the market's high demand for fast, reliable, highly sensitive analyses for, for example, troponin to be met. The fact that the Psyros system is user-friendly and has low production costs also makes it perfectly adapted to the market's needs.
Opportunities and Challenges
Prolight Diagnostics is currently focused on completing the system for clinical validation and subsequent commercialization. Prolight faces many opportunities, but also challenges, according to Kiarash:
– We have ambitious timelines with the Psyros system to manage, but given that the company has de facto delivered on all of its high-level goals in recent years, it is likely that the set milestones will also be achieved according to plan. An important and critical area will be a successful Go-to-Market strategy.
According to Kiarash, the company will need to work strategically to enter into partnerships for commercialization. He looks forward to bringing his expertise in business development to help Prolight succeed in this as well.
