STD Testing with your Phone

[Meshuggah]

You have one new message..."syphilis :X"

What do smartphones and sexually transmitted diseases have in common? Well until recently, if you answered "not much", you would have been right. But the pair could be intimately acquainted if some untraditional European researchers have their way with cell phone users.

Dr. Tariq Sadiq, a researcher with St George's University of London, England has some big plans when it comes to using smartphones to test for STDs. His team is working on a system-on-a-chip test lab whose connector cable would slide into your smartphone's waiting, eager port and let you know whether you might have contracted one of a variety of common STDs, including HIV and syphilis.

The team received a $6.5M USD grant for the project, which they dub "eSTI2" -- short for Electronic Self-Testing Instruments for Sexually Transmitted Infections. Under their long-term scheme, the user would urinate on the waiting system-on-a-chip, which would carry out a series of reactions over the next 5 to 15 minutes. At the end of the run, an app on the smartphone would tell the user whether they had any STDs.

Dr. Sadiq is convinced the technology would be a big hit. He states, "It's bringing the diagnostics to the population rather than having the population come into clinics. We've really wanted to do this process because there's been this huge burden of sexually transmitted infections."

Many peoples' STD infections go undiagnosed and untreated because they are embarrassed and/or afraid of clinics. The device aims at helping people get over the hump of inactivity.

The researchers are eager to get their hands dirty with the implementation details. The group claims to have working chip prototypes that test for several common STDs. Their current prototypes cost around $15 to $30 USD, but the finalized version would only cost about $3 USD.

The team hopes to take the prototypes through clinical trials and then come into the consumer pharmaceutical market. Before the product could achieve market penetration, though it would have to overcome many obstacles -- for example researchers currently have no idea what the finalized cable to connect the system to cell phones might look like.

The current gen chips require a drop of blood (instead of urine) and instead of a direct link-and-test involve the user snapping a pic on their cell phone and sending it to a clinic for diagnosis.

The team leader explains, "We're kind of halfway there to be honest, and that's why we've got funding -- to complete that."

The team still isn't quite sure of the answers to some other pressing questions. For example, current off-the-shelf HIV tests have been criticized for being less than accurate -- so should they be included? And do people even want the kit to include an HIV test?

"We might not want to include an HIV test in a vending machine," Dr. Sadiq muses.

The team's commercial goal is to sneak the devices in the backdoor of clubs, so to speak, deploying them in inconspicuous vending machines. People could quickly buy the test, use it, and then dispose of it.

While Dr. Sadiq's team are preoccupied with sexually transmitted diseases, other teams think similar disposable chip test kits could have an application to a variety of diseases. Harvard University Professor George Whitesides has been hard at work on developing a commercial test kit that would detect a variety of diseases including HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, hepatitis and gastroenteritis.

In related news a web service recently launched that allows people to send e-cards to a recent partner breaking the bad news that they might have an STD -- without all the awkwardness.

http://www.dailytech.com/Researchers...ticle20115.htm

 

[Hobo Joe]

Interesting. How the hell we are going to use that phone after we pee on the chip?:neutral: