PRESS RELEASE 20.2.2018
For immediate release
Detecting illicit drugs outside of laboratory environments can be extremely dangerous, expensive and time consuming. A new revolutionary scanner device TactiScan is an affordable, portable drug-screening scanner designed to detect illicit narcotics without unnecessary officer exposure, helping police officers screen narcotics safely in just a few seconds in the field. The re-usable pocket-sized device will see the light of day today at the GPEC International Exhibition & Conference for Law Enforcement and Homeland Security in Frankfurt.
Unnecessary exposure to unknown substances and prolonged waiting times with perpetrators cause futile risks to police officers in the field. On top of being unsafe, current methods such as test kits and Raman devices are also either slow, designed to be used only once or too expensive for most police departments. Many departments are already eliminating field testing because of the high costs and dangers of sample preparation and field test kits, such as drug exposure, chemical burns and cuts from the test kit ampules.
With TactiScan no sample preparation is needed, as it can scan through bags, using infra-red light to detect the sample. The revolutionary narcotics scanner will considerably lower the costs of narcotic screening and make field testing safe and actionable. This will be ensured with an easy-to-use mobile app which shows the results in just seconds. The device runs on a secure, intelligent cloud with an ever-expanding narcotics library, and the cloud connection with advanced machine learning algorithms ensure the detection of unknown street samples. The intelligent algorithms together with commonly used chemometrics models also ensure that narcotics will be detected with most known cutting agents.
TactiScan is a product of Spectral Engines, an award-winning innovator known for the development and production of groundbreaking smart sensor technologies. The company is now looking for test groups to evaluate the performance and usability of TactiScan in the field. After the field evaluations, TactiScan will be ready to hit the market later this year.
“We are very excited to finally be able to present the TactiScan to the whole world. It is the crown jewel of our development work in applications for professional use. We firmly believe that the scanner will be a true groundbreaker for police officers, border patrols, and other law enforcement officials,”, says Tomi Väänänen, Spectral Engines’ Business Development Manager.
In 2017, Spectral Engines received a Horizon 2020 SME Instrument funding worth 2.4M€ from the European Union for the development and ramp-up production of TactiScan. Spectral Engines develops spectroscopic devices, smart sensors and advanced pocket-size analyzers and provides the tools for material sensing in a variety of applications. Spectral Engines has focused especially in the development of applications for smart farming, smart industry, smart homes and portable measuring devices such as TactiScan.
For more information, contact:
TOMI VÄÄNÄNEN
Head of Business Development
+358 40 028 4264
tomi.vaananen@tactiscan.com
