Prioritising safety in capillary blood collection
Over our 70-year history, our innovative lancing device portfolio has remained central to our success as a company, always growing, evolving, and most importantly adapting to ever-changing market needs.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic where we were all encouraged to test at home for any symptoms, the home diagnostics market has seen significant growth over the past few years. Home diagnostic kits enable patients or users to conduct different types of tests and get results directly within the comfort of their own home. Using a lancet device, patients or users collect their own blood sample and return it back to a laboratory for analysis of one or multiple conditions, either previously diagnosed or undiagnosed. It is crucial that the process is as intuitive and safe as possible, and we are committed to achieving this goal through our established point-of-care testing device portfolio.
By continually working with healthcare professionals (HCPs) and patients we wish to deliver, comfortable, accurate and most importantly, safe medical devices that draw on our manufacturing experience. This has resulted in the creation of our newest safety lancet, the Unistik® Touch 16G. We have manufactured single use safety lancets for over 20 years and the Unistik® Touch device builds on this by incorporating a number-of safety features to protect the user and any others who may come in contact with that stored or disposed device.
Firstly, our lancets are sterilised and kept sterile by the over moulding of the lancet cap over the needle tip. This also covers the needle until the device is ready to use. With one-touch activation, the device is pressed against the sample site, allowing it to activate automatically under pressure. Once activated, the blade retracts into the body of the device, minimising the risk of re-use and needlestick injury. This simple and intuitive design is important not only for HCP’s but home users now as well, as patients testing themselves at home may find these easier to use if they are new to capillary blood sampling, and thus its simplicity helps to minimise the chance of NSI.
The Unistik® safety lancet portfolio is built around safety and designed to specifically protect the user. We have designed lancets with safety in mind long before the implementation of safety directives[i]. Owen Mumford will continue to develop safety lancets with safety as a top priority alongside intuitive ease of use and ergonomic and innovative design.
[i] Directive 2010/32/EU - prevention from sharp injuries in the hospital and healthcare sector