A 'Handheld Laboratory' Offers the Potential to Diagnose Malaria in Under 15 Minutes
Published date : 22 February 2014
Article date : 22 February 2014
Medcitynews.com reports on what is described as a 'handheld laboratory' which is designed to diagnose malaria in under 15 minutes. It could be in the hands of healthcare workers overseas within 2 years if the manufacturer, QuantuMDx can meet its goals.
The medical device company has turned to Indiegogo in search of $50,000 for field trials of miniaturized DNA sequencing device.They say that unlike many other crowdfunding campaigns, this is no early-stage project and that donors will be directly contributing to the development and testing of the device.
How the device works is that a finger-prick blood sample is placed on one of QuantuMDx’s disease-specific cartridges which is placed in the device. Within 15 minutes results appear on the touch screen, telling the healthcare worker whether malaria was detected in the sample, what species it is and whether it showed traits of drug resistance.
