Smart
phones can pay our bills, track our diets, and record our slumber. Soon
they may become a leading weapon in the global fight against disease.
Researchers have designed
a
cheap, easy-to-use smart phone attachment (shown above) that can test
patients for multiple deadly infectious diseases in 15 minutes. All
it takes is a drop of blood from a finger prick. Pressing the device’s
big black button creates a vacuum that sucks the blood into a maze of
tiny channels within its disposable credit card–sized cartridge. There,
several detection zones snag any antibodies in the blood that reveal the
presence of a particular disease. It only takes a tiny bit of power
from the smart phone to detect and display the results: A
fourth-generation iPod Touch could screen 41 patients on a single
charge, the team says. The researchers conducted a field test of the
device at three Rwandan community clinics, where health care workers
rapidly screened 96 patients for HIV and active and latent forms of
syphilis. Compared with gold standard laboratory tests, the dongle was
96% as accurate in detecting infections, missing just one case of latent
syphilis, the team reports online today in
Science Translational Medicine.
Despite a 14% false alarm rate, the researchers say the device’s high
sensitivity and ease of use make it a powerful tool for diagnosing these
deadly diseases in the field, particularly among pregnant women. The
researchers are now preparing a larger scale trial for the $34 device,
which they hope will let mobile clinics and health workers provide rapid
and reliable disease screening in the remotest areas of the world.
