Legionella infections are constantly increasing in European countries as well as worldwide, with major impact on public health and in the risk assessment activities of hospitals and tourist accommodation facilities and spas. Microbial culture still holds the majority share of water testing market that was the largest and fastest growing segment of global Legionella testing market in the past: since it is labour-intensive and time-consuming, rapid automated tests are gaining popularity in the industry. In this context, POSEIDON project is an interesting contribution in preventing and combating the spread of Legionella infections, thanks to the use of advanced and rapid technologies, indispensable prerequisites for effective prevention and control activities.
The POSEIDON project developed an innovative sensing device architecture to yield reliable measurement readouts of pathogenic presence and to be applicable for detection of all serogroups L. pneumophila. The prototype system is composed of several custom components designed and integrated from the handling of the air/water sample in preconditioning unit for sequential concentration to the delivery in a microfluidic device through which whole bacteria cells are transported from the sampling module to the sensing plasmonic surface. The POSEIDON project further developed a custom test aeraulic circuit as an innovative tool to test air quality monitoring systems in controlled environmental conditions, both indoor and outdoor, and to plan appropriate countermeasures when the pathogens contaminating the rig were detected.
The possibility to obtain results in few hours, compared with several days required for conventional microbiological in vitro tests, would enable new approach to bacteriological environmental monitoring, having breakthrough impacts in the economic exploitation of new-generation devices and improved safety. Prompt and effective intervention is expected to decrease the number of outbreaks, resulting in improved health conditions, especially for immunocompromised people and elderly patients and to reduce the sanitary costs for the management of legionella-induced infections. Societal impact and security will be enhanced thanks to the introduction of automation in the monitoring systems, as the test procedure will require less intervention by operators and will assure higher safety level for people and the environment. The increasing need for real-time remote monitoring and actionable analytics in industries will aid in the growth of the market over the next few years.
Contemporary, the POSEIDON project would strengthen the competitiveness and growth of participating companies by developing innovations meeting the needs of European and global markets, and by bringing such innovations closer to these markets, sustaining Europe's industrial competitiveness and securing industrial technology leadership. Remote monitoring is another prospect that would determine further improvements and commercialization opportunities: indeed, the POSEIDON project fits the interesting trend and the advances in monitoring systems and intelligent technology, i.e. the integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) with industrial HVAC systems to improve the efficiency and reliability of the building automation system (BAS). Such a combination will help industries in reducing their carbon footprint by cutting down the annual energy costs as well as optimizing the management and risk assessment of buildings.
Finally, the POSEIDON project stressed the integration of several knowledges in fields of plasmonic sensing, microfluidics and surface functionalization. The core photonics sensor was fabricated having a route to low cost manufacture by using existing DVD manufacturing methods. In fact, the fabrication of plasmonic gratings through fast and cheap techniques on widely available supports (such as DVDs and CDs) could make the whole process cheaper, increasing the potential market penetration of the new devices.
