Diagnosing malaria, a disease that kills one child every minute around the world, could soon take as little as 30 minutes to do — perhaps even on your smart phone — thanks to a new device created by a team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).
The “lab on chip” needs less than a drop of blood (around 10 lakh blood cells) to detect cells infected with malaria. A disposable cartridge first adds re-agents to the blood sample to mark out malignant cells from healthy ones. It then delivers the sample to the handheld instrument which in turn uses an optical reader that quantifies the infected blood cells, Sai Siva Gorthi, Assistant Professor at the Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics and Principal Investigator of the project, told The Hindu .
The low-cost device, which could cost just Rs. 10 per test , is small enough to fit in our hands, and would be particularly useful in parts of India where access to laboratories is poor, he added. Those who can afford smartphones can use their phone camera — with the help of a hardware add-on and an App developed by the team — detect malaria and get a quantitative analysis report too. “The hardware essentially helps turn the camera phone into a microscope,” Dr. Gorthi said.
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