ABSTRACT

Background

After a long and very hard effort, in mid 2021, Medkad finally has become a licensed Pharmaceutical Wholesaler and, in collaboration with Reszon Diagnostic International, began the development of Salixium – a Covid-19 Rapid Antigen Testing Kit. It’s an RTK self-test kit that uses saliva and nasal sample as a specimen to detect the presence or absence of the SARS-CoV-2 antigen in the body. Salixium became the first Malaysian made test kit, and also one of the earliest test-kit that was approved by the MDA, verified by Halvec Laboratories, and endorsed by the Ministry of Health to be use at home.

After its launch, Salixium become the first product of its kind in the Malaysian market, with all research and development done in Medkad’s laboratory in Technology Park Malaysia. The manufacturing process was also developed in the country.

Method

Salixium is using dual swab samples combination from nasal and saliva as a specimen for the testing. The theory behind it is with dual samples, it will increase the advantage of detecting the viral load. Having a sensitivity level of 91.23% with 100% specificity, it is still one of the most precise self-test kit available in the market.

And contrary to popular view, the nasal swabbing technique uses by Salixium is not as painful and invasive as you are led to believe. You’ll only need to swab the anterior nasal (around 2cm deep), using a disposable swab with a fabric tip. It is more hygienic and pretty safe to use and very unlikely to cause any harm, even for a first time user.

Apart from that, Salixium also comes with a mobile app, mySalixium, where users could scan the product to check the genuinity, and get a step-by-step guide on how to do the test. They could also request for a teleconsultation to do the self-test using another feature, Tele-Salixium, where our medical assistant would monitor and assist users with the test, and issue a SIMKA test certificate should they request for it.

Impact

On our part, Salixium is one of our highest achievement, in terms of product reach and, and also our biggest challenge too. As a rather new player in the pharmaceutical industry, there are many other big players, especially manufacturers from outside of the country that we need to compete with in the test-kit market, product development, and medical research. Thus, we are so privileged to be able to stand as tall and deliver a local product that we can all be proud of.

On the customer part, we could see that our product is helping in doing exactly what it is designed for – be the first-tier protection against Covid-19, and getting more and more people to self-test in order to curb the pandemic situation in Malaysia.

Conclusion

Acceptability for Covid-19 self-test kits in Malaysia is increasing, and has brought us to new high that we could only imagine before. However, there are a few Self-Test Kits in the market that differed markedly by a number of attributes. These findings could be relevant to the public so as to choose only certain options of test kits availabale in the market that do the job well. And we are very much confident that Salixium is one of the best test-kit out there.