The goal of the diagnostic company ArcDia, operating in Turku Science Park, is that no one should have to take unnecessary antibiotic courses and that one could recover from a cold quickly.
Sometimes antibiotics can save lives, but they are also known to cause obesity, yeast infections, and even cancer. Despite this, they are still prescribed far too often. If patients were tested to identify the pathogen before prescribing antibiotics, every second course could potentially be avoided as unnecessary.
“Excessive use of antibiotics is a real threat to all of us. Antibiotics affect intestinal microbes and, through that, a person's overall well-being. Furthermore, bacteria are developing resistance to antibiotics, which threatens to make surgical procedures or, for example, childbirth life-threatening because antibiotics no longer work,” says Janne Koskinen, CEO of ArcDia, which specializes in infectious disease diagnostics.
ArcDia is a company based in TriviumCity that develops and manufactures automated rapid infection tests. The company’s story began in the early 2000s at the University of Turku, where the development of rapid diagnostics for infectious diseases was being researched.
“In my dissertation in the field of biotechnology, I researched how a new diagnostic technology developed in Turku would be suitable for rapid testing. Professor of Bacteriology Pentti Huovinen, who acted as our mentor, ‘ordered’ from my research group a device that would allow for the rapid examination of 10 pathogens in a single test. From this interdisciplinary cooperation, the mariPOC® research device was born, capable of testing up to 11 pathogens in 20 minutes with a single test.”
In Turku, those who have fallen ill with a cold can speed up their recovery by visiting the Flunssapiste test at the TriviumCity courtyard.
ArcDia was founded around the technology and began operations in 2008, and Koskinen moved to lead the company's product development, production setup, and the development of the quality system. ArcDia's purpose was to commercialize mariPOC® and bring laboratory-level diagnostics directly to clinics. This would make the work of physicians easier, allow for medication to be chosen with certainty, and ensure the patient would recover as quickly as possible with minimal side effects.
ArcDia brought its first products to market in 2011. Currently, the company has 20 employees and is the Finnish market leader in automated rapid testing for respiratory infections. Half of ArcDia's sales come from Finland and half from abroad; in Finland, its mariPOC® research devices are used at, among others, Mehiläinen, Pikkujätti, Lääkärikeskus Aava, and TYKS.
“In order for every cold patient needing treatment to be tested, testing must be easily accessible and affordable. To meet this need, we recently developed the Flunssapiste concept, where rapid tests used by professionals are brought directly to consumers as a testing service, for example, through pharmacy health points.”
In Turku, those who have fallen ill with a cold can speed up their recovery by visiting the Flunssapiste test at the TriviumCity courtyard. Based on the test results, a doctor can prescribe antibiotics or antiviral medication for the patient as needed.
“We perform tonsillitis and cold tests in Turku. Cold tests come in two scopes, from which the ill person can choose either a package identifying four or 10 viruses. Results arrive via SMS within a couple of hours, in addition to which they are also recorded in the Kanta service.”
Without reliable testing, the effort to avoid antibiotics can even lead to the loss of human lives.
“A regrettable example of the consequences of a wrong diagnosis is the death of a four-year-old girl reported in the news this spring, caused by the Streptococcus A bacterium. Streptococcus is most often easily curable with antibiotics, but precise treatment requires making the correct diagnosis quickly.”