news

This $34 smartphone
accessory diagnoses HIV in 15
minutes
Now all you need is a smartphone and some
blood, and you can diagnose HIV and
syphilis from anywhere on the planet.

For the first time, researchers have
managed to replicate all the mechanical,
optical, and electronic functions of a lab-
based blood test in one, low-cost
smartphone accessory.
Developed by biomedical engineers from
Columbia Engineering in the US, the device
can simultaneously diagnose HIV and
syphilis in just 15 minutes.
This means that anyone with a smartphone,
whether they’re in Rwanda, the slums of
India or the Australian outback, now has
instant access to a medical lab 24/7. And
doctors can start treating patients within 15
minutes, which, when you think about how
long we currently wait for test results to
come back, is pretty damn revolutionary.
The device works by performing an enzyme-
linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) that
looks for three antibodies all at the same
time - the HIV antibody, and two different
antibodies for syphilis.
Impressively, the new accessory - or dongle,
as the team is calling it - doesn’t need any
stored energy, as it pulls all the power
required from the smartphone it's attached
to.
"Our work shows that a full laboratory-
quality immunoassay can be run on a
smartphone accessory," Samuel K. Sia, who
led the development of the device, told Holly
Evarts in a Columbia Engineering release.
"Coupling microfluidics with recent advances
in consumer electronics can make certain
lab-based diagnostics accessible to almost
any population with access to smartphones.
This kind of capability can transform how
health-care services are delivered around
the world."
The device has already been piloted by
health-care workers in Rwanda, who tested
96 patients enrolled into programs to help
prevent the transmission of infectious
diseases from mother to child. The results
came back within 15 minutes, with
sensitivity of 92 to 100 percent.
In addition to it being accurate and quick,
97 percent of the patients said they would
prefer the dongle test to traditional lab tests
because it was so easy - health-care
workers only required 30 minutes of training
to use the dongle. The results of the first
trial have now been published in Science
Translational Medicine.
Tassaneewan Laksanasopin, Columbia
Engineering
The list of features that Sia and his team
have put into the dongle is pretty extensive,
but basically they’ve done everything they
can to make it cheap and easy to use, even
in areas that don’t have access to power
consistently.
By using a ‘one-push vacuum’ to run the
assay, rather than an electrical pump, they
made the dongle less energy consuming.
The team also worked out how to use the
headphone jack to transmit power and data
to the device, which means the dongle can
be used on any kind of smartphone,
including iPhones or Androids.
Considering the fact that you can’t even use
the same charger for an iPhone 4 and an
iPhone 5, we think this is pretty
revolutionary. And did we mention that Sia
predicts the device will cost around US$34
to manufacture, compared to US$18,450
that normal ELISA equipment costs?
"Our dongle presents new capabilities for a
broad range of users, from health-care
providers to consumers," Sia told Evarts in
the release. "By increasing detection of
syphilis infections, we might be able to
reduce deaths by 10-fold. And for large-
scale screening where the dongle's high
sensitivity with few false negatives is
critical, we might be able to scale up HIV
testing at the community level with
immediate antiretroviral therapy that could
nearly stop HIV transmissions and approach
elimination of this devastating disease."
"We are really excited about the next steps
in bringing this product to the market in
developing countries,” he added. “And we
are equally excited about exploring how this
technology can benefit patients and
consumers back home."
We are too.