2019 Oklahoma Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grants Program - Competitive

The State of Oklahoma is requesting funds under the FY2019 Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Competitive Grant Program for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) for a proposed project that will reduce case turnaround time while increasing the drug/drug categories screened, including opioids. OSBI’s current drug testing procedures is limited and at this time, there is no assay available for synthetic opioid screening. The OSBI will purchase a Randox Evidence Plus Biochip Array Technology (BAT), a fully automated immunoanaylzer ideal for batch analysis. Using 2 BAT, the system facilitates simultaneous screening of various drugs utilizing a small sample size. The Randox Evidence Plus allows for a large improvement in capacity and will allow for a broader spectrum of screening capabilities, including synthetic opioids, to allow the applicant to better monitor the current drug trends. One Randox Evidence Plus would complete the work of two instruments currently in place now and would do so significantly faster. In addition, the requested equipment has built-in quality checks while the current method relies on three controls for each batch. This will help in reducing false positives/negatives and eliminating retesting the entire batch.

CA/NCF