Keyword: Medical Devices
Technology: FloDx is developing the NeoNasal Wash, a consumer-friendly nasal lavage device intended to improve sample collection for at-home respiratory diagnostics. The device delivers and collects saline across a broad mucosal surface to increase analyte yield compared with standard nasal swabs.
Problem being addressed: At-home molecular testing for respiratory infections such as COVID-19, flu, and RSV has grown rapidly, but sample collection remains a weak point. Self-administered nasal swabs can produce inconsistent samples, user error, and false negatives. This is especially important for high-risk and pediatric populations, where accurate testing can guide timely care and reduce unnecessary clinic visits.
Lessons learned through Customer Discovery: The team believed its main value was replacing uncomfortable nasopharyngeal swabs with a more comfortable, non-invasive collection method. Customer discovery showed that comfort is secondary; the stronger value proposition is improving test sensitivity for populations and conditions where swabbing is difficult or unreliable. The team is therefore focusing on targeting high-risk, immunocompromised patients as their beachhead market.
Through interviews with recyclers and industry stakeholders, the team found that while mechanical processing is common domestically, much of the pyrolysis activity is outsourced to India because of lower costs and less stringent environmental regulations.
This creates a more complex commercialization challenge: the team now needs to determine whether its process can work within India-based pyrolysis pathways or whether there is a viable pathway to bring environmentally responsible pyrolysis capacity back to the United States
Team members:
- Elliot Jang, Master’s student at Penn Arts & Sciences
- Mihika Jain, Undergraduate Student at Wharton
- Nico Manuto , Undergraduate Student at Penn Engineering
- Prableen Kaur, Undergraduate Student at Penn Arts & Sciences,
- Sophia Jorgensen, Undergraduate Student at Penn Arts & Sciences
IP: In process
Lead inventors: Nick Manuto