Smartphone Diagnosis? Biosensing Platform Quickly and Accurately Diagnoses Disease and Monitors Treatment Remotely

News Brief by Fred Lu

Your smartphone just got smarter. Researchers have discovered a way to screen for infectious diseases using a sample as small as a drop of blood without the need for extensive laboratory infrastructure. Waseem Asghar, Ph.D.,of Florida Atlantic University, Hadi Shafiee, Ph.D of Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Biomedical Engineering, Fatih Inci, Ph.D, and Utkan Demirci, Ph.D of the Stanford School of Medicine combined paper and other types of flexible material to build an electrical and optical biosensor that can be linked to a smartphone app, allowing for rapid diagnosis and identification of microbes. In contrast with existing biosensors that require signals to be amplified before use, are expensive to manufacture, and require expensive equipment to deploy, these sensors can be constructed at a low cost and are simpler to use. Asghar hopes that this development can speed up the diagnosis of infectious disease and clinical research in developing areas.

Florida Atlantic University. "Smart phone diagnosis? Biosensing platform quickly and accurately diagnoses disease and monitors treatment remotely." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 2 April 2015. .