This is probably from the software the most thought of software and machine design on a syndromic panel market that you will be able to find. The machine needs approximately 1 h 30 min to run the test, the hands-on time is 30-45 seconds and cannot be compared to FilmArray. The user is logged in and the test is scanned in no time, everything even without touching the screen. User hardware and software experience will be at a very high level.


Photo: ePlex system installed on 23rd of November 2017

The basic system is available as 1 bay with six slots what requires quite a big investment (ca. 100 000 EUR) that just a rear customers are ready to invest in the system with no established reputation on the market. If the customer (the lab) is a little bit business oriented, what is nowadays needed, and also evaluates the stock performance, then is the investment decision even harder to reach.
I was happy to hear that the marketing team realized the problem and is offering now ePlex mini as a one bay / three slots entry device which could make a decision making by some costumes much easier. We hope for GenMark that this marketing approach will result in more placements and paying customers.

Lots of American companies find it really difficult to sell in Europe and the main reason is the segmentation of the European market. GenMark is the faced with the same situation with the addition of narrow product-line (RP and BCID assay) and practically no differentiator in the respiratory assay (RP) against FilmArray (BioFire). Considered that mostly respiratory testing makes the volume of syndromic testing makes RP-assay "hard to sell" for GenMark sales force. The blood-culture assay has the best panel composition among all competitors (BioFire, Verigene-Luminex and Accelerate Diagnostics), unfortunately, such an assays are not volume makers in Europe and sepsis market is very busy.