Hand-held jaundice detector completes first clinical study

NEST360°, an international team of scientists, doctors and global health experts, is a Rice initiative preparing for the competition on December 11. The money would allow the team to carry out its plan to halve the number of newborn deaths in African hospitals within 10 years.

“As the clinical study of BiliSpec shows, saving newborn lives in sub-Saharan Africa is achievable,” said NEST360°’s Rebecca Richards-Kortum, a Rice bioengineering professor and study co-author. “It simply requires the right tools in the right hands at the right time.”

The clinical study, which is based on tests in February and March on 68 patients at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, will appear in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the Texan university, BiliSpec is a low-cost, battery-powered reader designed to diagnose jaundice by immediately quantifying serum bilirubin levels from a small drop of whole blood applied to an inexpensive, disposable lateral flow strip.