Innovation Watch: Portable Malaria Test

Diagnostics are a major frontier for medical technology. Particularly in the developing world, the ability to quickly and cheaply diagnose diseases can improve the capacity of local healthcare systems to effectively respond to medical problems.

A couple days ago, MIT Technology Review reported on what could be a major breakthrough: a portable Malaria test that does not need refrigeration.

The key difference between this test and previous tests has to do with the conditions under which the diagnostic tool can remain accurate:

What separates this test from others like it is that the reacting proteins used can withstand warm temperatures for long periods. Usually reagents must be refrigerated in order to work, which presents a huge barrier to developing tests for places that lack steady electricity. Paul Yager, a professor of bioengineering at UW, and his colleagues dried antibodies with sugar in a way that allowed them to survive for over two months in warm temperatures.

Tiny channels inside the credit-card-size device direct a patient's blood sample to testing sites where antibodies bind to malarial proteins, creating colored spots that a portable, automated reader (dubbed the DxBox) interprets.

Already, the scientists who build the device are working on similar cards for other common afflictions such as the flu. The thing that makes me most excited about an advance like this is that it's the type of tool well suited for local healthcare infrastructure in the developing world. The effect of not needing the same sort of refrigeration as previous treatments is in part, to reduce dependence on foreign doctors and expensive labs to take care of the normal business of treatment.

Malaria is a treatable disease that still kills almost 900,000 people per year. Technology like this, embedded in the proper structure, can eliminate a huge portion of those unnecessary deaths.