New Test for HIV Takes 15 Minutes, Costs $1

Samuel K. Sia, a biomedical engineer at Columbia University, has developed a cheap test for HIV infection that can return accurate results almost instantly:

"We have engineered a disposable credit card-sized device that can produce blood-based diagnostic results in minutes," said Sia. "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."[...]

Sia hopes to use the mChip to help pregnant women in Rwanda who, while they may be suffering from AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, cannot be diagnosed with any certainty because they live too far away from a clinic or hospital with a lab. "Diagnosis of infectious diseases is very important in the developing world," said Sia. "When you're in these villages, you may have the drugs for many STDs, but you don't know who to give treatments to, so the challenge really comes down to diagnostics." A version of the mChip that tests for prostate cancer has also been developed by Claros Diagnostics and was approved in 2010 for use in Europe.

Link -via DVICE | Photo: mChip