New Optical, Acoustic and Electrical Technologies for Developing World DiagnosticsThursday, 29 March 2012 at 10:00 Add to Calendar ▼2012-03-29 10:00:002012-03-29 11:00:00Europe/LondonNew Optical, Acoustic and Electrical Technologies for Developing World Diagnostics Lab-on-a-Chip European Congress in Edinburgh, ScotlandEdinburgh, ScotlandSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com Infectious diseases cause 10 million deaths each year worldwide, accounting for ~60% of all deaths of children aged 5-14. Although these deaths arise primarily through pneumonia, TB, malaria and HIV, there are also the so called “neglected diseases” such as sleeping sickness and bilharzia, which have a devastating impact on rural communities, in sub-Sahara Africa. Here, the demands for a successful Developing World diagnostic are particularly rigorous, requiring low cost instrumentation with low power consumption (there is often no fixed power infrastructure). In many cases, the levels of infection within individuals are also sufficiently low that instruments must show extra-ordinary sensitivity, with measurements being made in blood or saliva. In this talk, a description of these demands will be given, together with a review of some of the solutions that have been developed, which include using acoustics, optics and electrotechnologies, and their combinations to manipulate the fluid sample. In one example, we show how to find a single trypanosome, as the causative agent of sleeping sickness, amongst a background of over 100 million bloods cells. |