Newsight’s Rapid COVID-19 Detection Test Shows Promise in Clinical Trial

ARC@Sheba Medical Center reports that in a recent initial clinical trial where hundreds of patients were tested, Newsight Imaging’s spectral device, which can identify and classify evidence of a virus in the body in less than a second, achieved a 95% success rate.
 
“Under laboratory conditions, we were clearly able to differentiate between COVID-19 samples that were positive and those that were negative, with a 95% percent accuracy rate. For a new AI based technology such as this, the results are quite encouraging,” said Professor Eli Schwartz, of the Center for Geographic Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Sheba Medical Center, who is leading the trial.
 
Newsight’s innovation manifests in the ability to bring an expensive device to be implemented in a single cost-effective chip, using an AI algorithm to separate the profile of a human infected with a specific virus, from a human infected with a different virus or from a healthy human. Newsight’s device simultaneously checks 1024 spectral channels, currently in the visible light spectrum of 400-700 nm. During the span of the on-going trial, the company plans to present a device that will be capable of examining a spectral profile in wavelengths of up to 1100 nm. Patents for the company’s technology are already registered worldwide.
 
Sheba’s ARC is actively engaged in testing and implementing a range of anti-COVID technologies at Sheba Medical Center.
 
Newsight, which is based in Israel and Sheba’s ARC Innovation Center are also establishing a joint company called Virusight Diagnostics LTD. that will make the COVID-19 test and other solutions commercially available to the medical community around the globe.
 
“We are very excited about this collaboration between Sheba Medical Center’s ARC program and Newsight. I am confident that given Newsight’s leading technology and ARC’s innovative approach and ecosystem of collaborators, we will be able to provide cutting-edge diagnostic solutions that could be transformative in our battle with COVID-19 and beyond. ARC, which stands for Accelerate, Redesign and Collaborate, aims to bring to market game-changing innovation, and Newsight is a perfect partner to join the ARC global ecosystem,” added Dr. Eyal Zimlichman, deputy general director, chief medical officer and chief innovation officer.