Lab-on-a-chip: a game-changer in disease detection

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NEW YORK: A cheap, highly portable blood test kit has proven as accurate as expensive hospital-based analyses in detecting HIV, syphilis and other infectious diseases, according to a new study.

Researchers tested prototypes of the credit card sized lab on a chip with hundreds of patients in Rwanda, reporting nearly 100 percent accuracy.

The so-called "mChip", they said, could help knock down three barriers to effective delivery of health care into the world's poorest regions: difficult access, high costs and long delays for results.

"The idea is to make a large class of diagnostic tests accessible to patients in any setting in the world, rather than forcing them to go to a clinic to draw blood and then wait days for their results," said Samuel Sia, a professor at Columbia University and lead developer.

The findings were published in Nature Medicine. (AFP)