Microscope company celebrates prestigious European award
23 Jun 2017 by Evoluted New Media
ioLight – the world’s first portable hi-res digital microscope has won the European Product Design Award.
ioLight – the world’s first portable hi-res digital microscope – has won the European Product Design Award.
As well as this, the company has also closed a second round of equity funding, hitting above their initial target. The European Design Award received more than 500 entries from 43 countries, with each one judged on form, function and innovation.Alex Jones, MD at Cambridge Industrial Design, who worked closely with the iolight team, said: “The final design is a real success both aesthetically and ergonomically, and this award is a fantastic acknowledgement for the design process and the final product that we have created together with iolight.”
In 2014, Oxford physicists Andrew Monk and Richard Williams filed a patent application for a pocket sized digital microscope with performance comparable to that of laboratory equipment. It was a challenging design as the microscope needed a resolution of one micron – in order to see animal or human cells – while remaining portable.
Richard Williams said: “It is vital that ground breaking new products are easy to use and look great or nobody will try them. Our images speak for themselves but the microscope had to be much easier to use than a bench microscope.“
