Boyd Biomedical, Inc.

© 2026 Boyd Biomedical, Inc.

LymeAlert Tick Crusher™

About the Work

LymeAlert set out to put Lyme disease screening into people's hands at home. Their single-use kit pairs a tick crusher with a lateral flow assay strip and reagent: a user drops a found tick into the crusher with buffer solution, closes and rotates the cap to prepare the sample, then inserts the test strip and reads the result as a color change. They had proven the concept with rapid-prototyped devices, but turning that proof into a manufacturable product was a different problem. They needed a tick crusher that could be evaluated for feasibility at volume and produced by injection molding.

LymeAlert came to Design by Boyd for creative problem solving, deep product development experience, and design-for-injection-molding expertise. Over a six-month engagement, Design by Boyd refined the concept into a final prototype design, delivered 1,000 injection molded samples for testing, and supported the transfer of the design to LymeAlert's chosen manufacturing partner.

Concept Generation & Development

Requirements Definition
Industrial Design
Mechanical Design
Rapid Prototyping

Design & Development

Design for Injection Molding
Final Design Package

Design Transfer

Feasibility Testing Prototypes
Manufacturing Transfer Support
Our Work

Concept Development

The brief carried a long list of competing requirements. The device had to crush one or more ticks and mix the contents with reagent, all while preventing a pre-crushed tick from escaping and keeping spillage to a minimum. It had to use as little reagent as possible to maximize sample concentration, prevent reuse, stay intuitive for a first-time user, and hold down cost without compromising ease of use.

Working on in-house 3D printers, Design by Boyd rapidly tested a range of crushing and mixing concepts to learn what actually worked in the hand. The team converged on an approach where the user loads a tick, snaps on a cap, and rotates it a couple of turns, with the mixing happening during rotation, transparent to the user. The result is deliberately simple: a base and a cap that snap permanently together once the tick and reagent are loaded, after which the cap is rotated and the supplied LFA strip is inserted into the top to be read minutes later.

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Our Work

Design & Development

Concept clarity meant little without a path to production. Every design decision was made with injection molding in mind, so the geometry that performed in prototyping could be reproduced reliably and economically at scale. Design by Boyd compiled the design requirements, translated them into a final design package complete with drawings and material specifications, and produced 1,000 injection molded prototypes, molded and individually bagged, for LymeAlert to put through feasibility testing.

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Our Work

Design Transfer

When LymeAlert's evaluation confirmed the design was right for their initial market release, Design by Boyd supported the handoff to their selected injection molding partner and stayed engaged with additional support and communication after the project closed.

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Our Work

Outcomes

A rapid-prototyped concept became a manufacturable product ready for market release. The design LymeAlert tested is the design they chose to launch with.

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Production Ready Design

Design by Boyd turned LymeAlert's early concept into a final design engineered for injection molding, balancing a demanding set of requirements including, crushing, mixing, containment, single use, and cost, without sacrificing ease of use.

Prototypes for Feasibility Testing

 The team delivered 1,000 injection molded samples, molded clean and individually bagged, giving LymeAlert the volume they needed to validate the device and make a confident go-to-market decision. 

Path to Production

After LymeAlert selected the design for their initial release, Design by Boyd supported the transfer to their chosen manufacturing partner and continued to provide support beyond the close of the engagement.

In The News

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Bitten by a tick? This 15-minute home test can tell you if it carries Lyme disease.

LymeAlert seeks to help people avoid the cost and the wait of going to the emergency room after being bitten by a tick

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By Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff, June 17, 2026

Just because you’ve been bitten by a tick, it doesn’t mean you’re going to contract Lyme disease. After all, the tick might not be a carrier.

Wouldn’t it be good to know, before racing to an emergency room? That’s why laboratories throughout the United States will test ticks for Lyme disease and various other infections these bugs may carry. You can expect to pay anywhere from $50 to $450 and wait a week or more for results.

But soon you’ll be able to run a 15-minute tick test in your living room. It’s called LymeAlert, and it’s due to go on sale in August, priced at $40 per test.

Company founder Erin Dawicki, a pediatric orthopedic physician assistant, came up with the concept while working toward an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“I went to MIT because I was getting so angry at the US healthcare system,” Dawicki said, “because it forces me to treat people differently based on their insurance status and that’s their socioeconomic status. And frankly, that goes against my ethical framework.”

She figured that an MIT degree would help her find technological solutions to even out health care disparities. “I thought I was going to work on health care reform at the federal level,” Dawicki said. “Clearly, the universe had other plans. Read more.

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Your innovation Just Might change the world. But is your design up to the task? We help you turn Just Might into Just Mighty.