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Summary A cheap, highly portable blood test has proven as accurate as expensive hospital-based analyses.
According to a study, this chip has proven useful in detecting HIV, syphilis and other infectious diseases.Researchers tested prototypes of the credit card-sized lab-on-a-chip with hundreds of patients in Rwanda, reporting nearly 100 per cent accuracy.The so-called mChip, they said, could help knock down three barriers to effective delivery of health care into the worlds poorest regions: difficult access, high costs and long delays for results.The idea is to make a large class of diagnostic tests accessible to patients in any setting in the world, rather than forcing them to go to a clinic to draw blood and then wait days for their results, said Samuel Sia, a professor at Columbia University and lead developer. The findings were published in Nature Medicine.With a projected production cost of a dollar per unit, the mChip would be far cheaper to administer than current lab-based tests.The mChip, by contrast, allows for measurement using a hundred-dollar hand-held instrument no more complicated to use than a cell phone, according to the researchers.Finally, the device produces results in minutes rather than days or weeks, a time saving that can make a big difference in treatment outcome.
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