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Smartphone Attachment Can Test For HIV In 15 Minutes
stephendavion writes A team of researchers from Columbia University have developed a device that can be plugged into a smartphone and used to quickly test for HIV and syphilis. The mobile device tests for three infectious disease markers in just 15 minutes by using a finger-prick of blood, and draws all the power it needs from the smartphone, Science Daily reports. The accessory costs an estimated $34 to make and is capable of replicating tests done in a laboratory using equipment that costs many thousands of dollars.
Imagine if you can prick the finger of a hooker in a Pattaya bar while you're drinking, "just as a joke!", and figure out whether you need to strap on a condom or not. Wonderful invention for all the people who need immediate HIV tests for their partners! Yay for sex tourism!
Until it goes wrong and doesn't work. This type of thing is a litigation nightmare. Looks like vaporware to me, and the actual legitimate applications seem few.
Here is a link to the original article cited by the Times that contains more detail.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I'm guessing the target audience is medical workers in poorer countries with limited access to labratory equipment to test for these diseases. The local doctor can come to the village with their smartphone, this device, and a bunch of clean needles for it. The more mobile and cheaper medical equipment can be, the easier it is to care for people. This doesn't address the idea of safe sex though, its just a piece of test equipment.
The accessory costs an estimated $34 to make
which means it will cost $34,000
"Pricking yourself with something that an infected person used is a sure-fire way to get an infection.
It's as if you don't even know how diabetic test strips, and other test strips like this one, work, or even that lancets of all kinds are disposable.
If you RTFA and click through to the Science Daily article, you'd read this:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
That is fucking spectacular.
Shut the fuck up.
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BMO
The device has replacable cassettes that contain the reagents for the testing. To develop a device like this only to have it capable of spreading infection would be an incredibly stupid oversight.
Too bad HIV has a window period of three weeks to three months.
... in the U.S.A. but about 70$ in Canada.
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Because the medical researchers who developed the AIDS testing smart phone attachment didn't think of that, and you did.
Join the IParty!
doesn't matter. if it's "in" or "on" a smart phone, it's available remotely.
Hey, no worries, this is Slashdot!
Give him a couple more years sitting on his couch-bed in his mother's basement drinking Mountain Dew and eating chips while playing video games and troling Slashdot.
He WILL know all about lancets! Or be dead. One or the other.
This is perfect for iPhone users!
http://www.artronlab.com/produ...
These kinds of strips are far cheaper, easy to use, don't require power, don't require a smartphone, etc.
FTFA (referenced by wed128), it uses some sort of 'disposable cartridge'. There are plenty of ELISA based throw away, non powered, no computer required tests available even over the counter. Pregnancy tests and drug screens are two really common ones.
What I don't see is why the researchers had to hook the thing up to a smartphone (or any other bit of electronics) in the first place. Perhaps there are some technical details that require, for example, UV florescence to get the signal up but this isn't clear. They use a custom (read more expensive) cartridge for the three tests. You aren't going to get those things in a convenience store in the Middle of Nowhere. Especially nowhere's that can't even afford disposable gloves.
Yeah, I'm being a bit snarky here but we've seen dozens of these things 'on a smartphone'. Touted for low resource areas because there are smartphones and little else but hampered by the fact that the smartphone really isn't doing all that much more than five dollars of cheap Chinese electronics could do and further they need some other expensive 'special sauce' to work. I would hope (vainly of course) that the 'journalists' could perhaps dive a few millimeters deeper than they do.
But who am I kidding?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What's the false positive and false negative rates of this cheap test, vs the normal one? While it's probably better to have a mediocre test rather than none at all, there are times when that's not true... high false positive rates for rare conditions can waste resources on healthy individuals. High false negative rates for common conditions can give patients a false sense of safety.
The specificity of the test matters a lot before you can judge its utility.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
For the Tinder user on the Go...
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
The very next comment after mine starts with "Imagine if you can prick the finger of a hooker in a Pattaya bar while you're drinking". Tell me again that warning people not to share a device like that is unnecessary.
So rather than read, you decide to double-down on the stupid.
Let me explain this loudly and slower so you may understand.
T_H_E__L_A_N_C_E_T_S__A_R_E__D_I_S_P_O_S_E_D__A_F_T_E_R__U_S_E
Thrown away, into the trash. With the cap placed back on so nobody gets stuck. They come in boxes of 100 and they are fucking cheap. No sane person re-uses a lancet.
You're exhibiting some weapons-grade stupid there, guy.
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BMO