An introduction from FlexMedical’s newly appointed CSO – Donogh FitzGerald

I am excited to announce that I have joined FlexMedical Solutions (FMS) as Chief Scientific Officer, and wanted to take this opportunity to share this news with my contacts and friends in the industry. I have had involvement with FMS since its inception in 2015, and we agreed this year to consolidate the relationship and take up this permanent role to help introduce scientific muscle to the organization.

Donogh FitzGerald in the FMS Lab

As you may (or may not) know, FMS is a  company based in the central belt in Scotland  who specialize in contract development and manufacturing of point of care diagnostic sensors, with a client base consisting of SMEs covering industries such as IVD, Chemical/Biochemical and Agri-Food. We have a sizeable cleanroom facility housing an enviable amount of equipment capable of high precision device manufacturing, as well as volume production. We have an established quality management system in place and expect to gain ISO13485 accreditation this year, which will allow us to support our client base on a broader program, and we will now expand our chemistry and reagent capability to complement this.

I’ve been working in R&D in IVD since 1996, holding senior leadership jobs across a range of large diagnostics companies and have had the privilege to lead large groups responsible for the delivery of some fine diagnostic platforms (both in the realms of point of care and high throughput lab instrumentation). During this time, I’ve developed and launched assays for different disease states, and developed assays and surface chemistries for a broad range of assay architectures such as chemiluminescence, electrochemistry, fluorescence and colorimetric, leveraging micro particle science, magnetic separation and electrode chemistries to achieve this. In addition, I’ve gained great knowledge of 6-sigma (and other similar philosophies) and how it can be leveraged within chemistry development (using tools such as design of experiments, creative problem solving, and Kaizen) to shorten development timelines, and improve the robustness of technical decision making.

I couldn’t be joining FlexMedical Solutions at a better time, as we broaden our horizons with the implementation of ISO13485 and expand our scientific lab capability and capacity. I will help FMS expand its offering in the areas of assay and reagent development and manufacturing, electrode characterization and optimization, electrochemical method development on our new functionalized electrodes, development of heterogeneous and homogeneous assay technologies on FMS electrodes, system integration (combining chemistry, electrode, algorithms and settings) and quality control (onboard controls systems, external controls for POC, and product release).

So as the work progresses, I’ll keep you posted on the ups and downs as we develop and implement these added capabilities, and the new processes and functionalities we develop with our electrodes in order to expand their applications, and support our client base further.