USA-HIV SMARTPHONE Could a $34 smartphone device improve HIV diagnosis in Africa?

Record ID: 402550

  • Title: USA-HIV SMARTPHONE Could a $34 smartphone device improve HIV diagnosis in Africa?
  • Date: 27th February 2015
  • Summary: WIDE OF LAKSANASOPIN AND SAM SIA, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, HOLDING DONGLE AND SMARTPHONE (SOUNDBITE) (English) SAM SIA, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, SAYING: "So we made this accessory to a smartphone that can perform complex blood tests, instead of doing a blood draw and getting that samp
  • Embargoed: 14th March 2015 12:00
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  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA25NRKJPUIU1AOQ9TSRENO55CS
  • Story Text: A $34 USD device that plugs into the audio jack of a smartphone was nearly as effective as far more costly diagnostic blood testing equipment in identifying antibodies for HIV and syphilis in a pilot study in Africa, U.S. researchers said.
    The mobile lab device, known as a dongle, was 10 years in the making and cost $34 USD to make, compared with more than $18,000 USD for traditional gold standard diagnostic equipment. In a pilot study, the device performed all of the mechanical, optical and electronic functions of a lab-based blood test in 15 minutes, using only power drawn from the smartphone.
    It was developed by a team led by Samuel Sia, associate professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University in New York.
    "We made this accessory to a smartphone that can perform complex blood tests, instead of doing a blood draw and getting that sample sent to a lab, you can actually do it on the spot with just a finger prick of blood and you get the result in 15 minutes with a very similar quality as doing the test in a lab," said Sia.
    To test its effectiveness, health care workers in Rwanda used the tool to perform finger-prick blood tests on 96 patients, including women who were at risk of passing sexually transmitted diseases to their unborn children.
    "It's really a matter of life and death, because for a lot of these patients they simple cannot travel the distances to testing clinics to get their blood drawn and get the results, which means that they're not treated for these conditions," said Sia.
    "In this specific case, pregnant women, if they're not treated for HIV or syphilis, they will pass these diseases on to their newborns and a lot of times the newborns aren't even born alive. You have a still birth. So by providing accessible diagnostics to these patients, they can get treated and their babies can actually be born and thrive and live, so it's really a matter of life and death if they don't have these diagnostics," Sia added.
    The team compared the results with standard enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay or ELISA testing, and found the results were nearly as accurate. The test has a sensitivity of 92 to 100 percent, a measurement of how often the tests accurately identified the target antibodies, and it had a specificity of 79 to 100 percent, an indicator of how well the test did at ruling out people who were not infected.
    Sia said that the long term plan for the device is far reaching, and not just limited to testing for HIV and syphilis.
    "We can certainly look at other STDs such as hepatitis, herpes and so forth as well as other infectious diseases including malaria and so forth, but also chronic diseases," he said.
    "So cancer, diabetes. As long as these diseases can be diagnosed using a class of blood tests called ELISA tests, then we can replicate that, but this doesn't cover everything but it does cover a wide range of conditions. And for consumer health, these blood tests extend to non-diseases applications as well, so if you change your diet and exercise regime and you actually just want to be monitoring and following your health as seeing whether or not your health is improving in addition to weighing yourself, taking your blood pressure, which are a little bit imprecise, there's markers, hormonal levels, vitamin levels, wellness markers, those are also tests that we can do."
    The researchers estimate that with syphilis, a test with only 70 to 80 percent sensitivity and specificity that was performed at the point of care could reduce deaths tenfold compared with a perfectly accurate lab-based test, because the non-lab test would be more likely to increase syphilis diagnosis.
    The study was backed by a grant from the Gates Foundation and several other funders and published on February 4 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
    "I think a technology like this certainly has the potential to transform the healthcare system," said Sia.
    "As consumers we're really used to doing almost everything on our smartphone now and if we can extend those capabilities, which are already moving into health and wellness for these smart devices, they're keeping track of the number of steps you're taking or measuring your heart rate or blood pressure, but if we can actually extend that into blood testing, which is a really core part of the healthcare system, then I think you'll start seeing fewer visits to the hospital just to do routine examinations, again saving the healthcare system money, but allowing that initial diagnosis to be made in settings such as pharmacies or in people's homes and really resulting in a much more cost efficient healthcare system."
    The researchers are planning a larger-scale clinical trial with the goal of winning approval by the World Health Organization for use in developing countries.
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