Smartphone diagnosis via card-mounted lab-on-a-chip differentiates similar viruses

Infectious disease is still the biggest causes of human death and disability worldwide, and are a particularly acute problem in developing countries where easy access to clinics equipped with up-to-date diagnostic equipment is often limited. But the rapid spread of smartphones has put advanced technology into the hands of many more people, and leveraging their capabilities for healthcare applications has become a subject of great interest.

The US team, spread across electrical engineering, bioengineering and mathematics departments at the Universities of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Washington at Tacoma, developed a lab-on-a-chip system that can be mounted on a very portable credit card-sized carrier and read by the camera on an unmodified smartphone, providing diagnostics almost as sensitive and accurate as those of clinic-based equipment but potentially at a fraction of the cost. Moreover, the team claims, it can distinguish between diseases with similar symptoms, allowing the right treatment — or quarantine, if necessary — to be administered quickly.