Incredible Diagnostic Tool

If you watch the English series House, you'll see how hard it is for a doctor to diagnose a disease. Well, in that series, the disease may be exaggerated in someway to give more dramatic effect towards the viewer but rest assured, now there's no need for doctors, well except a brilliant one like House. XD

A team of researchers from UC Berkeley, Dublin City University and Universidad de Valpairaiso have developed a plastic biochip using microfluids technology which can revolutionized the world of diagnosticians. The biochip, called SIMBAS (Self-Powered Integrated Microfluidic Blood Analysis System) is basically a system that can diagnosed blood disease in a matter of minutes without using the big and bulky lab equipment.

The SIMBAS chip, by using tiny microfluidic channels will take the blood samples and separate the plasma from the blood cells. Using gravity to pull the blood cells towards the biomarker detection, the chip is said to be able to accurately diagnose diseases such as AIDS and Tuberculosis. What amazing about SIMBAS is its small size chip (1" by 2") is cheap to produce and does not take much space. It can be used anywhere. The third world countries may be thrilled to hear about this as it gives an accurate result. The team hope that this technology can also be used to diagnose heart disease, sepsis, cancer and other diseases that exist in developing countries. 

Following the same topic, University of Columbia, recently has developed tiny plastic card that can be used to diagnosed HIV in a matter of minutes. Using basically the same microfluiditic technology, the researchers are able to produced mChip (that's what they call it) with credit card size. The conventional HIV test will need an expert to draw blood and lab equipment but by using this chip, the cost will significantly reduce, there's no need for lab equipment and we can get the result in 15 minutes. 

As for right now, this tool can help in detecting HIV, syphilis and mostly blood-related disease. The professor who lead this project says that this tool can help in detecting disease in developed countries very well and together with the advancement in pharmaceutical area, the disease can be treated early and very well.

Source:
http://gajitz.com/disease-detection-in-minutes-with-incredible-plastic-biochips/
http://gajitz.com/dynamic-diagnostic-tiny-plastic-card-ids-hiv-in-minutes/