Currently, remote and rural communities have difficultly taking care of their patients, having to outsource a lot of the work to bigger hospitals. Getting a doctor to properly understand what is infecting a patient can take up to several days, meaning the patient doesn’t get the proper treatment until then. We are proposing to design and build a machine that can diagnose patients who are infected by a variety of different viruses using cutting edge molecular technology. Our liquid-powered microchips will search for the genetic makeup of dangerous viruses to determine exactly what the patient has, down to which variant of a virus may be infecting them. All of this will be done cheaply and with little effort on the part of medical practitioners.
To ensure that patients in remote communities can get these diagnostics during the time it takes to see the doctor, the accompanying machine will also be very small, compact enough to easily fit on the desk of the doctor. Given the low cost, ease of use, and portable nature of the device, it will be suitable for a variety of in-the-field uses and be perfect for remote regions lacking advanced laboratory equipment.