Meet the UQ graduate behind the first COVID-19 home diagnostic tool
Dr Sean Parsons saw firsthand the huge impact of a pandemic when he was only a few years out of UQ and working as a young doctor in the emergency department of Caboolture Hospital.
What he saw on the frontline in 2009 was a system in crisis, barely coping with the large number of people presenting with suspected swine flu, whose symptoms could only be accurately diagnosed through sending samples to a laboratory from which they would return several days later.
In just over a decade since then, Parsons (Bachelor of Science (Honours) ’01, Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery ’05) has turned into an international medical entrepreneur – largely through the development of a rapid and accurate flu test.