Grant: Engage Grants Program

Point-of-care tests (POCT) are simple medical tests that can bring complex disease diagnostic and screening tests currently performed at centralized facilities to patients bedside and thus are envisioned to significantly improve the quality of healthcare. However, only a few POCT systems have been commercialized for diagnosis, prognosis, and screening of devastating diseases, such as bacteria and virus infections. This proposed research will work towards design, fabrication and testing of a smartphonebased POCT diagnostic system that detects bacterial and viral pathogens from patient samples by identifying species-specific genetic sequences using color. Leveraging the advantages of DNA-mediated ultrafast color generation and accurate color identification using the Nix Color Sensor, this system will analyze clinical sample for major infectious diseases in less than one hour by just using a smartphone and thus allow physicians to screen patients accurately in a non-invasive manner during a single visit. If successful, the simple and inexpensive smartphone-based tests, which are currently not available, can be easily incorporated into a routine physical checkup to screen patients before presentation of overt symptoms. Such early screening will hold great promise to enable personalized healthcare, improve quality of life, and decrease the financial costs associated with patient care.