[caption id="attachment_11496" align="alignleft" width="200"]
Smartphone dongles performed a point-of-care HIV and syphilis test from finger prick whole blood in 15 minutes, operated by health care workers trained on a software app. Credit: Samiksha Nayak, Columbia Engineering[/caption]
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Tassaneewan Laksanasopin
PhD Candidate
Molecular and Microscale Bioengineering Lab
Columbia University
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: We miniaturized and integrated all components needed for blood test (similar to ELISA) to be run on a smartphone accessory for point-of-care testing of infectious diseases. The device simultaneously detects three infectious disease markers for HIV, treponemal syphilis and nontreponemal syphilis from a finger prick of blood in just 15 minutes. In a blinded experiment in three health clinics in Rwanda, local health care workers obtained diagnostic results from 96 patients enrolled in prevention of mother-to-child transmission and voluntary counseling programs. The test performance from our triplexed test was 92-100% sensitivity and 79-92% specificity compared to the gold standard of lab-based HIV ELISA,
Treponema pallidum haemagglutination and rapid plasma reagin. Importantly, patient preference for the dongle was 97% compared to lab-based tests, with most pointing to the convenience of obtaining quick results with a single finger prick. This work suggests coupling microfluidics with recent advances in consumer electronics can make certain lab-based diagnostics accessible to almost any population with access to smartphones.
