Future Labs vibrant example of a UK-Pakistan partnership: Dr Christian Turner

Islamabad: In its effort to fight and respond to Covid-19 and increase domestic testing capacity for Covid-19 diagnosis, Future Trust in partnership with technology from Opencell UK has launched Future Labs.
Future Labs has launched a highly advanced robotic mobile Covid-19 laboratory. Built in the United Kingdom by Opencell UK, the laboratory is a Biosafety Level 2 plus (BSL-2+) facility built to ISO 15189 standards.

The state-of-art lab is specified to meet the requirements for high throughput Covid-19 RT-qPCR testing. Due to the use of 5 liquid handling robots, this lab requires as little as 6 staff members to operate all the shifts. The lab can process over 2000 tests per day.

British High Commissioner Dr Christian Turner thanked Ambassador Siddiqui for “making him excited about the project”. He highlighted various reasons why he thought Future Labs was something to celebrate.

The first, he said, “is because this lab is a vibrant example of a UK-Pakistan relationship built on people, that I am privileged to serve in the middle of”. Secondly he noted, “UK is proud of having been in the forefront of the fight against Covid-19 in its efforts to pursue a vaccine and its distribution internationally, as well as for providing development assistance to a broad spectrum of Covid relief, through UK Aid, to Pakistan”.

He added that this is a story of economic growth and trade and that he is very keen to boost inclusive and export led economic growth through more collaborations such as this.