AnyMDx Diagnoses Illness in 30 Minutes

Diagnosing a disease by symptoms and the biochemical assays can take a while and sometimes the illness may become severe. A team of electrical engineers have sorted out a tool to deal with diagnosis. Weihua Guan has created a device that will deliver a diagnosis to the patient in 30 minutes. The assistant professor of electrical engineering in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, with the help of his graduate student, Gihoon Choi, has created "AnyMDx: A Mobile Molecular Diagnostics Lab for Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime" for rapid diagnosis.

Their invention consists of three parts: a small footprint box which is the analyzer; a disposable disease-specific microfluidic compact disk that the doctor puts a patient's sample of blood, saliva, etc. in; and an optional smartphone app to interpret the results.

"By leveraging our advanced microfluidic, microelectronic and optic technologies, we are now able to integrate all the steps in nucleic acid diagnosis, including sample preparation, amplification and results reading, in a 'sample-in-answer-out' fashion," said Guan.

"Our device can handle a wide variety of samples: whole blood, saliva, swab, sputum, urine, stool and various pathogen types: parasites, bacteria and viruses. Our device requires no expertise to run the advanced molecular diagnosis and it delivers the results to the patient in under 30 minutes."

Not only will AnyMDx be faster, Guan is working to make sure the device can be used in harsh and resource-limiting environment. With help from funding from the College of Engineering's Engineering for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (ENGINE) grant program, Guan and Choi are making sure the instrument is mobile, battery-powered and able to withstand any conditions, in any kind of environment.

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Source-Newswise