BRIO Systems, a technology company offering a complete COVID-19 testing system for the workplace, has raised $1.9 million in seed funding to advance its platform that helps employers navigate the complexities of workplace safety and reopening amid the pandemic. The funding comes from lead investor One Way Ventures, Techstars Ventures, Nimble Ventures, Castor Ventures (AVG), and individual angels such as John Capodilupo (CTO of Whoop).

"We realized that with technology, we could eliminate the natural frictions and inefficiencies that occur in laboratory testing of individuals outside of the hospital setting," said BRIO CEO Boris Lipchin. "We could connect labs and patients that would never otherwise be able to interact and enable access to testing that is not only purpose built to provide a world-class experience to both employers and employees, but does not burden the healthcare system in their community at all."

BRIO's platform puts COVID-19 testing in the employer's hands, enabling them to respond quickly to understand infections among employees, contain potential outbreaks, measure previous exposure, safely maintain business operations, and return people to work-every day, in communities hardest hit by the pandemic. As many essential industries and employees are being asked to work harder than ever, BRIO is focused on bringing peace of mind, as a true partner in the testing process. Many of its clients have used the platform to quickly identify and contain on-site outbreaks, thereby maintaining business operations without having to sacrifice employee health and safety. Companies who have tested with BRIO to date have collectively more than 100,000 employees.

"BRIO quickly adapted at the start of the pandemic to combine their laboratory relationships and passion for improving care to create an offering that uniquely addresses the challenges employers are facing due to COVID-19 outbreaks," said Semyon Dukach, managing partner of One Way Ventures. "We are impressed with how they've continually stayed ahead of the testing curve, despite the challenges the system faces at large."

BRIO's unique relationship with a network of labs across the country allows it to offer customers a three-day or less turnaround for delivering COVID-19 test results, even as delivery times have lagged throughout the country amid new coronavirus case spikes. Its network of lab partners have historically been confined to customers in close geographic proximity, but BRIO's platform effectively matches corporate customer needs with labs who can best meet capacity and demand. BRIO's platform allows employers to measure both active COVID-19 infections through FDA Emergency Use Authorized-PCR testing, as well as previous exposure to the virus through industry-leading serological testing, which measures both IgM and IgG antibodies in quantitative formats.

BRIO engages medical supervision to requisition tests, so no separate doctor's order is needed, and communicates results from the lab directly to the individual tested, through a secure, HIPAA-compliant online dashboard. Employers gain access to team level data and individual data, with consent. In a world where COVID-19 testing has increasingly suffered from decreasing levels of security, medical oversight and regulatory scrutiny, BRIO maintains the highest standards of regulatory compliance and patient experience.

BRIO's customers span manufacturing, food processing and other essential industries that have experienced an outsized impact of COVID-19, and include Harley-Davidson and Lifeway Foods, among others. In some cases, BRIO is able to deploy COVID-19 collection kits and have on-site nurses performing collections in as little as 14 hours from first contact with a customer.

ACME Finishing, a Chicago-based business that offers metal finishing and painting as a final stop for manufacturers of leading household products, worked with BRIO to test 25 employees after learning about a few initial infections among its manufacturing workforce.

"We thought we had planned for everything and had taken all the precautionary steps. With the potential for an outbreak, our team was asking whether we could morally and ethically justify staying open. But, if we didn't there was a decent chance it could have been the end of our business," said G.R. Kearney, president of ACME Finishing.

The company kept its operations going once the BRIO testing made it clear the outbreak was limited to a few key individuals, who were already quarantined and isolated, and that the company was not putting the health and safety of its workers at further risk.

The labs BRIO works with are CLIA-accredited, a classification that was authorized early on in the pandemic to process COVID-19 test samples. BRIO is further developing its platform with advanced dynamical models that harness statistical inference to help employers predict risk levels and the volume and frequency of testing required to limit their chances of a workplace outbreak.