A team has discovered a way to pack a lab into a smart phone dongle. The best thing about it is that it can be used to detect HIV infection in a short as 15 minutes.
A team of researchers from Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science, led by Samuel K. Sia, has developed a small and nifty device that you can plug in to your smart phone and can be used to screen HIV infection and syphilis in a quarter of an hour.
It is indeed revolutionary since there's no known tool that can detect both of these diseases using only one examination. Rather, each should be screened through separate tests.
This device already functions as a lab that can assess antibodies for syphilis and HIV using whole blood that can be derived from a prick of a finger. While traditional equipment need power to run, this device can perform these tests by relying on the energy supplied by the phone.
As a pilot study, the team brought the dongle to Rwanda where the prevalence rate of HIV and AIDS is around 3%. Health workers in testing and counselling centers, as well as transmission clinics that are currently conducting enrolling mothers who wish to prevent transmission of the disease to their children, tested the device among 96 patients.
The dongle, which is almost the same size as a standard mobile phone these days, work with disposable cartridges where health workers are going to place their blood samples. The cartridges already have reagents that have been resized to microscale level. The entire process takes about 15 minutes, and the results may also be stored in the phone.
If commercially produced, the dongle is expected to cost only $34. The average price of an HIV assay equipment is about $18,000.
The team had also modified the design so it will use less power.
