A few interesting points on if Philips is the POC partner and pardon me for being a wee bit technical in my discussion at times.
1) The NY presentation posted by vision claims the POC partner had sales of 10billion euros in 2013. Reading the Philips 2013 annual report third paragraph left column page 40, it claims "Healthcare sales amounted to EUR 9,575 million" - that matches.
2) A paper entitled "A fast intraoperative PTH point-of-care assay on the Philips handheld magnotech system" describes the reagents in the cartridge as "All assay reagents are stored inside the cartridge in a dry form."
http://www.business-sites.philips.com/shared/assets/magnotech/Jarrige-V-Magnotech-ioPTH-LAS-2011.pdf
It appears that the is at least one other well characterized assay on the device. What is interesting to me is that the reagents are dry.
3) From various photographs and cartoons on the Minicare, it certainly seems that the cartridge is plastic.
4) It was reported that there was a short video seen at the Anteo site visit with liquid rapidly moving along a channel.
5) In a youtube video describing the magnotech thingamabob, the narrator states that the blood is filtered.
OK - so here is my potential argument for believing that Josh Soldo statement that the device does not work without M&G: plastic is hydrophobic. If you ever look at water in a plastic test tube the meniscus (the way the water adheres to the side of the tube) is flat or depending on the plastic can even appear to be convex - like a lens facing up. Water tries not to touch the plastic. In contrast, the meniscus in a hydrophilic glass test tube appears concave with the liquid at the glass-water interface higher that the water in the center of the tube. This means that if you make a plastic cartridge using capillary action to move blood, the hydrophobic nature of plastic results in resistance to the movement of liquid (blood - a watery fluid) through the capillary. In other words, if it moves, it moves relatively slowly. But M&G changes surfaces, Page 12 of the New York presentation says that there is M&G for hydrophobic surfaces. We already know that M&G is water soluble - which is hydrophilic. Hydrophilic surfaces make for fast flowing capillaries. So M&G would appear to ensure good rapid easy movement within the POC cartridge. Time is everything. (Relatively) Rapid flow is going to mix the dry reagents better. There is no other liquid in the Minicare magnotech system. Plasma is a relatively viscous fluid - whole blood with the red blood cells filtered is plasma. Anything that can make this fluid move better faster smoother is going to be a big help when there is no mechanical pump. So along with the betterment of the M&G functionalized beads and sensor surfaces, it makes good sense that M&G indeed could be the secret sauce for this product. Troponin is a highly scrutinized assay since practically immediate decisions are made based on it in the ER. One has to get it right for it to be marketable.
I didn't see a more likely product or company for a POC partner in the paper cited in the Weekend Read thread.
Although I did find that paper referring to the PTH minicare test, I do not see it referred to in the Philips Minicare webpage - only acute cardio care is discussed. But here is a thought, the PTH test looks like it was working in 2011. Troponin is a much trickier analyte to get right. Is it possible that the Philips POC may get on the market with the PTH assay at first (POC1) and then when Troponin validation is complete it comes out second (POC2) with M&G? Thus the mystery of POC1 without M&G and POC2 with M&G is accounted for? As I said I can't find any more information about the Minicare PTH test but there is a demand for what is called an Interoperative PTH test.
(20min delay)