Taft Foley III, a Texas high school student, created a mobile medical lab business to offer covid-19 antigen tests with results in minutes, reports Houston CultureMap.
An 18-year-old high school senior from the Houston area mobilized his medical knowledge as one of the youngest EMTs in Texas and co-founded a mobile lab which can provide COVID-19 results in 15 minutes.
Texas Mobile Medical Labs was created to counteract testing delays that bogged down how quickly patients received results. The mobile lab currently operates in a van and a tent outside a community center in the Post Oak area for patients who prefer to come to them. For those that can’t, the mobile lab can travel to any patient or business location for employee testing in the Houston area after they set up an appointment.
“This summer I become an EMT, training at the Texas EMS Academy in Corpus Christi,” says Taft Foley III, co-founder of Texas Mobile Medical Labs. “When I got back to Houston I was asked to take a COVID-19 test, but I was met with a line that wrapped around the entire building and took two hours just to get inside.”
According to Foley, that spurred him into finding a better way to get results to people quickly.
“I did my research and found a better alternative to increase testing and reduce waiting times,” he says. “The antigen test works in 15 minutes, which makes them amenable to point-of-care use. That’s when I really got the idea of going out to our patients for the test so that they don’t have to leave home.”
The tests are performed with a nasal swab, which then detects a viral protein in an actively infected person, giving accurate and fast results.
Read more at Houston CultureMap.
Featured image: Taft Foley III, co-founder of Texas Mobile Medical Labs. Photo courtesy of Texas Mobile Medical Labs
