How your smartphone can tell if you have HIV or syphilis in just minutes

Columbia engineers have developed an inexpensive smartphone accessory that can perform a simple finger prick to detect three infectious disease markers that determine whether or not you likely have HIV or syphilis. The device produces results in as little as 15 minutes. 

The Columbia biomedical engineering team, led by Associate Professor Samuel K. Sia, created the device to draw all necessary power from the smartphone in order to work. The dongle, a small device that connects to a smartphone or computer, was recently tested by health care workers in Rwanda who used the finger-prick tool on 96 patients. 

“Our work shows that a full laboratory-quality immunoassay can be run on a smartphone accessory. Coupling microfluidics with recent advances in consumer electronics can make certain lab-based diagnostics accessible to almost any population with access to smartphones. This kind of capability can transform how health care services are delivered around the world,” said Sia. 

The accessory will have a manufacturing cost of only $34 which is much lower than $18,000-the typical cost of equipment of this nature. 

The team achieved low-power consumption by using a “one-push vacuum” as opposed to a power-consuming electrical pump so that a user can manually activate a negative-pressure chamber in order to move a sequence of components pre-stored on a cassette.

A user simply has to press the bulb of the smartphone dongle
to initiate fluid flow within the device.

The team also eliminated the need for a battery by using an audio jack to transmit power and data. Since audio jacks are standard among smartphones, the accessory is compatible with any smartphone device- like an Android or iPhone.

The process requires very little user training and no maintenance. During the tests in Rwanda, health care workers were only given 30 minutes of training to work the device. 

Early diagnosis and treatment of HIV and syphilis, especially in pregnant women, can have positive effects in patients’ so the device can actually help save lives. 

“By increasing detection of syphilis infections, we might be able to reduce deaths by ten-fold, and for large-scale screening where the dongle’s high sensitivity with few false negatives is critical, we might be able to scale up HIV testing at the community level with immediate antiretroviral therapy that could nearly stop HIV transmissions and approach elimination of this devastating disease,” said Sia. 

Sia and his team want to bring the product to developing countries to help transform health care services around the world. 

Story and Images via Columbia Engineering.