Smartphones are now a disease diagnostic tool

A team from the University of Houston developed a disease diagnostic tool using nanotechnology where only a smartphone and $20 lens attachment are needed to read results.

Jiming Bao, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Richard Willson, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, are the new system's creators.

The system's design is a biosensing device paired with a simple microscope that can read the results. Nanotechnology features in the biosensing part and the smartphone - enhanced with the affordable lens - could be the microscope part, researchers say.

The diagnostic tool detects the results of a chemical reaction between a pathogen, like a virus or bacterium, and a molecule, like a disease-fighting antibody, that bonds uniquely with it.

The published paper in the journal ACS Photonics details how the system works. In short, the inventors overcame the challenge of creating a quick, easy and affordable device that allows the reaction between pathogen and molecule to happen, and then senses the result clearly.

"Some of the more advanced diagnostic systems need $200,000 worth of instrumentation to read the results," Professor Wilson explains in a press release, yet "with this, you can add $20 to a phone you already have and you're done."

The trick involves a simple glass slide and a thin film of gold with thousands of transparent holes poked in it. These holes, measuring about 600 nanometers each, are key because the device diagnoses an illness by blocking the light to these transparent holes with a disease-antibody bond. If the sample contains the bacteria or virus being sought out, it will bond with the antibody in the hole.

The device is ingenious because the results can be read with a simple tool -like with a phone's camera, flash and an attachable lens.

"There are a lot of situations where an affordable diagnostic tool that is simple to use and simple to interpret could be very useful," said Willson. "If both your disposables and your reader are cheap, that makes it a lot easier to extend your system out into the real world."