Taking the strain

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Researchers in the UK and North America tell The Engineer about the technologies they are developing to help stop the spread of deadly swine flu.

The worldwide spread of swine flu is putting increased pressure on biomedical engineers to develop faster testing mechanisms for the disease.

The virus, known officially as H1N1, is currently detected through intense laboratory evaluations that take days to confirm or refute a suspected case.

Biotech companies in Britain and the US have recently made announcements that they are working on faster detection technology.

Within a month, InDevR, a company based in Colorado, hopes to roll out thousands of devices that could help hospitals detect swine flu in hours.

Its technology, called FluChip, which is based on DNA microarrays, demonstrated through past research an ability to distinguish between common human flu viruses and the H1N1 virus that originated from pigs.

Kathy Rowlen, chief executive of InDevR, said that the company still needs to test its technology with genetic material from the current strain of H1N1.

The source of the material, she added, will be either the US government’s Center for Disease Control or Health and Human Services (HHS), which funded the research behind InDevR’s detection technology.

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