Packaging Solution Of Nasopharyngeal Swab For Nucleic Acid Detection

At a time when the epidemic situation at home and abroad remains complex and severe, short-term nucleic acid testing is proving to be a must-have travel pass for all, and the demand for nucleic acid testing from the public is gradually increasing. Nasal/pharyngeal swabs, as the most important sampling method for diagnosing NIV infection, have been developing rapidly in the past few years and the market demand has been rising simultaneously.

To solve the painful problems of high labor cost and low production efficiency of nasal/pharyngeal swab packaging, in early 2021, Topstar designed a nucleic acid testing nasal/pharyngeal swab packaging solution that meets the needs of the medical industry by adopting the process required for the production process of nucleic acid testing nasal/pharyngeal swab and loading and unloading equipment. At present, the solution has been applied to many medical industry companies, helping the production line to realize automation and flexible production.

Manual cutting and loading and unloading is the initial production form of nasal/pharyngeal swab processing and packaging line. Workers take out the whole swab from the equipment, cut the swab edge material and place it back into the packaging line, which is completed by 6-7 manual workers. In this way, not only the manpower demand is high, but also the workers need to repeat a single operation for a long time, which is inefficient and of unstable quality, making it difficult to meet the demand of high-volume and high-quality production. At the same time, enterprises are faced with the dilemma of high labor costs and high staff turnover, and the automation upgrade of the production line has become an urgent demand for manufacturing enterprises.

Topstar nucleic acid testing nasal/pharyngeal swab packaging solutions to self-researched Topstar series SCARA robot, instead of manual completion of loading and unloading work, while with the cutting mechanism for swab edge material cutting work, without manual cutting, under the material, effectively improve product consistency. With the robot + cutting mechanism, the process that originally required 6-7 workers can be easily completed by only 2-3 workers.

In addition, Topstar SCARA robot repeat positioning accuracy ± 0.015mm, every 2.5 seconds can complete 1 material clamping and placement, high precision and high speed, compared with manual, can greatly improve the production line production efficiency and stability, to achieve the automation of the nasal/pharyngeal swab production and packaging process transformation.

This production line into the Topstar nucleic acid detection nasal/pharyngeal swab packaging solutions can help manufacturers save 50% of labor costs, improve production efficiency by 10%, and the project payback period of only 3 months. At present, the program has been successfully applied to some medical industry enterprises. According to the needs of different enterprises, Topstar can also be customized for enterprise production lines “can be copied, can be upgraded, universal” automation program to ensure cost-effective return on investment.