Time is of the essence during the pandemic

Avoiding the hospital altogether, or getting in and out as quickly as possible, is top of mind for most people during the COVID-19 era. Especially as hospitals near or are at capacity. And even though concussions from sporting events are on the decline, slips and falls are still occurring, which means there is still a need for concussion diagnosis and treatment. When hospital stay time is of the essence, having a TBI blood test available could help eliminate wait time in the emergency room and could reduce the number of unnecessary CT scans by up to 40%. Rapid diagnostic devices like i-STAT TBI allow healthcare workers to triage patients with traumatic brain injuries faster.

We are also working on a whole blood test, which would eliminate the need for separation of plasma and could be used at the patient’s side in a healthcare setting. Our vision for the future is that we’d have a 15-minute, portable test that can be used outside the traditional healthcare setting where people experience head injuries and need a quick evaluation, like sporting events.

The TBI blood test was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) – which has been dedicated to developing a solution for the objective detection and evaluation of TBI for more than a decade. The DoD, through U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command’s (USAMRDC) U.S. Army Medical Materiel Development Activity (USAMMDA), played a critical role in developing the test run on Abbott’s i-STAT TBI platform. The Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury (TRACK-TBI) research team were the first to demonstrate how this TBI blood test can be used for the benefit of TBI patients in clinical care.

For more information, visit TBI.