IN THE NEWS | Oceanit Joins HPR to Talk ASSURE-100 Over-The-Counter EUA
28 December 2022, Honolulu HI | Oceanit CEO, Dr. Patrick Sullivan and one of the ASSURE-100 team’s lead scientists, Dr. Tarah Suiter joined Hawaii Public Radio’s Casey Harlow to talk about the recent ASSURE-100 Rapid COVID-19 at-home test authorization.
On December 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted ASSURE-100 an emergency use authorization (EUA) for at-home use, a major milestone in the development of rapid diagnostics in the state of Hawai’i. Oceanit received a point-of-care EUA in February, 2022 for the ASSURE-100 test to be prescribed by doctors and healthcare professionals to people suspected of infection by SARS-CoV-2, but the December EUA now enables anyone to test, at any time, regardless of symptoms or prescription.
“We had been working on an artificial intelligence tool to design molecules with a toolset we call the grammar of RNA,” said Patrick Sullivan, CEO of Oceanit. “We thought we should do something useful in the pandemic, so we produced a point-of-care rapid test.”
Oceanit is now working to ramp up production of the ASSURE-100 Rapid COVID-19 Test and will be working with local retailers and mainland retailers to get the test on to shelves in the near future.