What is the Thrombinoscope?
The Thrombinoscope is an automated laboratory robot designed to perform thrombin generation analysis, a sophisticated assay used to measure the coagulation capacity of blood plasma. The system automates the Calibrated Automated Thrombogram (CAT) assay, which provides clinicians with a comprehensive picture of a patient’s haemostatic balance, useful in managing bleeding disorders, thrombosis risk, and anticoagulation therapy.
The system was developed at Tegema (now Etteplan) as a high-precision medical device project for the haemostasis diagnostics market, and was later commercialised and brought to market as a diagnostic platform for clinical laboratories.
The CAT assay
The Calibrated Automated Thrombogram measures how much thrombin is generated in a plasma sample over time, producing a characteristic thrombin generation curve (TGC). Unlike traditional clotting tests, CAT captures the full dynamics of the coagulation process, including peak thrombin, lag time, and endogenous thrombin potential, giving clinicians much richer diagnostic information.
Automating this assay removes the variability and manual effort of manual pipetting, incubation timing, and fluorescence measurement, while enabling high-throughput processing in a clinical lab setting.
Technology
The Thrombinoscope is a precision laboratory instrument combining:
- Motorised pipetting and plate handling automating the full CAT workflow with microliter-level accuracy
- C/C++ firmware on a real-time embedded platform managing motor control, timing, and assay sequencing
- An integrated optical measurement system tracking fluorescent substrate cleavage, the proxy for thrombin activity, over time
- Custom PCB design for motor drivers, sensor interfaces, and communication between subsystems
- Developed under ISO 13485 as a certified in-vitro diagnostic device
My role
I worked on this project as an electronic engineer at Tegema, contributing to the design and development of the embedded control software and electronics. This included writing the real-time control firmware, designing and testing PCBs, and supporting system validation for CE-marking as an IVD medical device.