Bridging the Gap in Diagnostics
Traditionally, biomedical engineers have developed technologies in response to the needs of the developed world’s medical community. These approaches often do not address the needs of the majority of the world’s peoples afflicted with both communicable and non-communicable diseases as the developments are far too costly and those with most need have, at best, limited access to supporting clinical laboratory infrastructure in developing countries. A gap in care has emerged as a result of these conditions. As a result, Drs. Beskok and Koklu have developed a Lab on a Chip technology that can test for a chosen disease with a turnaround time of just a few seconds and a detection limit of 1 ng of antigen per 1 mL of sample fluid. This is a great improvement to current devices on the market and is particularly useful in high-throughput, low-skill staffing environments. This report researched and authored by an interdisciplinary group of undergraduate students at the Southern Methodist University working in the Hunt Institute aims to address the areas of greatest need in response to UNSDG #3 "to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages."
Traditionally, biomedical engineers have developed technologies in response to the needs of the developed world’s medical community. These approaches often do not address the needs of the majority of the world’s peoples afflicted with both communicable and non-communicable diseases as the developments are far too costly and those with most need have, at best, limited access to supporting clinical laboratory infrastructure in developing countries. A gap in care has emerged as a result of these conditions. As a result, Drs. Beskok and Koklu have developed a Lab on a Chip technology that can test for a chosen disease with a turnaround time of just a few seconds and a detection limit of 1 ng of antigen per 1 mL of sample fluid. This is a great improvement to current devices on the market and is particularly useful in high-throughput, low-skill staffing environments. This report researched and authored by an interdisciplinary group of undergraduate students at the Southern Methodist University working in the Hunt Institute aims to address the areas of greatest need in response to UNSDG #3 "to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages."
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to safely transport glass plates is widely on the market, however, must be noted as a possible
concern or added precaution.
The device also has limitations on a needed secondary display. The complete device
needs to interface with a data output display for timely diagnostics, and at the moment this is a
fixed cost that may or may not incur variable cost of maintenance.
Secondly, either integrated into the display system or presented as a third piece, the
device which measures impedance and generates the signal required for operation need to be
rechargeable. However, the device still needs power infrastructure to be usable. And once again,
these extra parts are included in the fixed set-up cost incurred by organizations to operate the
portable device, and eventually will need to be replaced or maintained, including a variable cost
to the operation.
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