By Percy Chen, Junior Project Manager Art-Science

On October 21, the tenth Café des Sciences: Lives in Our Water took place at the swissnex China office. Ms. Xueying Mao, the Chief Representative of rqmicro AG China Office, gave an exceptionally educational presentation on water safety and legionella detection technologies.

Water safety is a subject that almost all of us take for granted. Yet, water is ubiquitous and a necessity - we are constantly exposed to water vapors. In fact, as Ms. Mao points out, one of the crucial water safety applications is in the central air conditioning systems at enclosed public space, such as shopping malls and subway stations. This is due to the fact that instead of transmitting through drinking water, legionella pathogen bacteria spread via airborne transmission. A compromised central air conditioning system could lead to a legionella outbreak, sickening tens of or hundreds of citizens.

rqmicro AG device that shortens legionella pathogen bacteria detection cycle from 7 days to 2 hours, reducing response time by almost 99%.

Audiences curiously asking about the science behind rqmicro AG technology

Moreover, Ms. Mao went over her experience surveying Chinese hospitals for legionella outbreaks. To her astonishment, almost all Chinese hospitals lack the proper equipments to diagnose legionnaires' disease. Since legionnaires' disease share symptoms with pneumonia and is sensitive to antibiotics as well, doctors will treat it as if they were treating pneumonia. This leads to antibiotics overuse, which is contributing to antimicrobial resistance, threatening the effective prevention and treatment of an ever-increasing range of infections and could turn treatable illnesses, such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, or minor infections incurable in the long term.

Therefore, rqmicro AG is actively working together with China CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) on a 2-year project to validate its innovative method for rapid Legionella and Salmonella testing in water samples. We hope as well as firmly believe rqmicro AG will accelerate the development of a proper solution to legionnaires’ disease prevention and treatment.

At the end, we would like to thank Ms. Mao for her fantastic presentation and all those who were involved in the discussion. We aim to create and share values among our community members and this Café des Sciences was more than informative. Thank you! Stay tuned for our next event.

To view more photos from the event, click here.

IPIEC（International Property innovation and enterpreneruship contest）was initiated since 2015 to facilitate and promote domestic innovation and entrepreneurship, and improve the awareness of the general public, academics, investors and entrepreneurs on technology trend and IP concepts. This year it’s third edition in China with a group of 30 teams, coming from different countries around the world, such as Germany, Israel, South Korea, UK, US and of course Switzerland.

Rqmicro from Switzerland recommended by swissnex China applied and successfully had been selected to join the semi-final pitching to local investors and entrepreneurs.

Rqmicro has developed a new technology that can separate and detects the microbiology in water and food related industry that delivers actual result in less than 1 hour. China is an important market with huge potential, rqmicro has applied and joined CTI China Market entry CAMP with ambition to entry.

IPIEC gives rqmicro a platform to pitch to potential market customers and partners by offering one-week coaching workshop and meetings with investors and Chinese companies. It helps rqmicro gained a deeper insight into the Chinese market, such as what technologies are needed in daily production and application of local industry; what questions foreign start-ups would typically face when coming to the Chinese market; etc. Another highlight was the Mars Summit in Shenzhen, where we met Sophia, the first robot to receive citizenship of any country.

There it’s also observed how IT industry blossomed in China and how this influenced our everyday life. The contest is ongoing, with voting by public, the final champion will be rewarded $100,000.