One of the most sought-after hopes for the medical community is the so-called lab-on-a-chip, which can be used for so many different tests. Many companies and researchers are working on it, but it has yet to come to fruition.

Onera Health, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, may have come up with a promising development in this field. Leveraging its longtime relationship with Imec, a leading research and innovation hub for nanoelectronics and digital technologies, Onera developed its Onera Biomedical-Lab-on-Chip™ to address an unmet need in medical and wearable devices for miniaturized clinical-grade and ultra-low-power signal collection and processing.

Onera Health showcased the Biomedical-Lab-on-Chip at CES 2022, and the reaction was immediate, according to Ruben de Francisco, founder and CEO of Onera.

“We anticipated a positive reaction from the market to the announcement,” de Francisco said. “Still, we were surprised by the amount of attention the Onera Biomedical-Lab-on-Chip received, both from CES 2022 attendees as well as from media around the world.

“Everyone was excited about the opportunities this technology creates for future applications, of which many we didn’t even think about during the development,” he added. “It has become clear that the chip will serve the need in the market well, and we look forward to seeing it being used to improve the health and wellbeing of people around the world.”

De Francisco said the Onera Biomedical-Lab-on-Chip offers multiple analog front-ends like 10x ExG, 2x bioimpedance and 2x photo-plethysmography readouts. The chip includes a powerful ARM Cortex M4f processor with embedded Flash, on-chip digital filters and hardware accelerators as well as multiple communication interfaces. As such, Onera says it is the most highly integrated and comprehensive biosignal sensor hub available today.

Founded in 2017 as a spin-off from Imec, Onera Health’s mission is to revolutionize diagnostics and monitoring in patients with chronic conditions, such as neurologic, cardiac and respiratory disorders.

Leveraging over a decade of research conducted at Imec as well as in Dutch and Flemish universities and healthcare centers, Onera is developing transformative technologies around biosignal recording and processing. The company received CE mark in 2021 for its first product, the Onera Sleep Test System (STS), which enables physicians to conduct clinical-grade sleep studies outside of a sleep laboratory.

De Francisco noted that the impact of this solution in improving access to sleep diagnostics, much needed by many patients with sleep disorders around the world, was acknowledged with two Red Dot Design Awards in 2021. In addition, Onera received a Technology Innovation Leadership Award from Frost & Sullivan also in 2021.

“The Onera Biomedical-Lab-on-Chip addresses an unmet need in medical and wearable devices for miniaturized clinical-grade and ultra-low-power signal collection and processing,” he observed.

“The Onera Biomedical-Lab-on-Chip was developed as a stand-alone product for implementation in various form factors to serve multiple applications in medicine, fitness or wellness,” said de Francisco. “Given its size and the fact that it can be powered from a single coin-cell, it is well suited for use in wearables, patch-based and even implantable technologies. For our own product portfolio, we see it perfectly serving our needs to further improve our Sleep Test System and other patch-based products for other indications currently under development.”

After Onera Biomedical-Lab-on-Chip completes validation testing, kits will be available soon.

“Our engineers are currently completing extensive validation testing,” de Francisco added. “Development kits will become available shortly and we are already in discussion with strategic partners on potential commercial applications, which will likely start in some months from now.”

After hearing from attendees at CES 2022, de Francisco said that the outlook looks great for the Lab-on-Chip.

“We are very grateful for the positive feedback we received from market participants on the Onera Biomedical-Lab-on-Chip, which validates our development thesis and gives us food for thought for the next great thing,” de Francisco concluded. “Onera’s roots in deep tech will help us further advance the field by releasing devices and solutions that improve people’s quality of life worldwide.”