Every year, millions of people become ill and thousands die as a result of eating unsafe food. According to the European Food and Safety Authority more than 320,000 human cases of food-borne diseases caused by pathogenic micro-organisms are reported each year in Europe. For that reason, the European Food Safety Authority is imposing strict food safety regulations specifying the maximum permitted level of any contaminant in food. EFSA has also specified that all food manufacturers are responsible for safety of the food they commercialize. The implementation of these regulations has resulted in the growth of the food safety testing market as well as new innovative technologies for detection of all kinds of pathogens. In this regard, the project QFast2 aims at performing a feasibility study for the market introduction of the first Rapid Multi-Target Pathogen Detection Kit in development by iMICROQ. This is a revolutionary product that will enable the fast (<24h), cost-effective and simultaneous detection of three different pathogens (Salmonella, Listeria Monocytogenes and Staphylococcus) directly on-site for food&feed safety industry by non-specialised personnel, with a platform that allows the user to implement the instrument within its own information technology protocol, with full traceability of the sample through the overall process.

iMiCROQ aims to bring to the market the first integrated platform for pathogen, immumological and PCR testing specially designed to cover the whole needs at farm level, internal control laboratories, food processors and point-of-care infectious disease testing. Thanks to its affordability, QSEIF will allow from SMEs to large companies to improve their biosafety and internal microbiology control to fulfil their requirements from ISO 22000, BRC or IFS certifications, while reducing the needs in laboratory space, the investment, the test cost and man-hour involvement thanks to higher automation. Another important breakthrough in the immunological sector is that QSEIF provides 1-2 orders of magnitude lower limit of detection, less time and better dynamic range than current reference test ELISA. We envision three important applications of this disruptive platform in the areas of: (1) Food Safety; (2) Vaccination Control; (3) Immunoassays for human and animal diagnosis. We will reach end-users from all these sectors according to different commercial strategies that have been tailored to suit each type of customer. The main objective of this project is to increase the technical maturity of the platform and to validate its performance and operability in operational environment with different end-users. After this 24 months project, we will lauch QSEIF to the market with the aim of becoming an international reference in the diagnostic market. The viability of the technological, regulatory, market and financial aspects of the QSEIF innovation project were assessed through a feasibility analysis carried out in SME Instrument Phase I. From the analysis, we expect to install 717 devices that would perform 5.2M tests in a five year period. By then, QSEIF platform will bring an accumulated Net Profit of 5,32M€ by 2024. It is expected that sales of QSEIF will represent 40% of the company’s total revenue in 2021, growing to 88% by 2024.