A Medical Test for the Third World

A team of Harvard University chemists have developed a simple technology that takes an expensive medical device know as a microfluidic chip and puts it within reach of the third world.  Using paper and double-sided tape as opposed to rubbers or plastics that require multimillion dollar fabrication equipment, these chips can eventually be made widely available for mere pennies on the dollar.    

[They] operate much like a home pregnancy test, in which liquid creeps up a cellulose strip toward a color-changing line. But unlike the pregnancy test, these new chips can split a single stream of liquid into dozens of channels. Each of those canals could be used to perform a different diagnosis for diseases such as HIV, dengue fever or hepatitis.

Beyond health diagnostics, this technology can also be applied to a number of environmental factors ranging from water quality to the health of plants and animals.  These initial findings have been published recently in a paper for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Wired: Complex Medical Test Made From Paper and Tape for Three Cents