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SMU Journal of Undergraduate Research

Abstract

With the recent launch of the Global Development Lab in the Hunter and Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity, fellows, faculty, and industry professionals have been working to create meaningful solutions to promote a resilient humanity, addressing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and challenges. The Institute has taken on Dr. Ali Beskok’s project, the development of a low cost, portable, Point-of-Care-Device for humanitarian and health applications. This paper provides a systematic review of current Point-of-Care-Devices using antibody antigen reactions. Additionally, it provides aspects of a market analysis and a literature review. Its overarching goal is to make recommendations regarding a disease the developing device could test for through antibody antigen reactions that would most positively affect global health. Traditionally, biomedical engineers have developed technologies in response to the needs of the developed world’s medical community. These approaches often do not address the needs of the majority of the world’s peoples afflicted with both communicable and non-communicable diseases as the developments are far too costly and those with most need have, at best, limited access to supporting clinical laboratory infrastructure in developing countries. A gap in care has emerged as a result of these conditions. As a result, Drs. Beskok and Koklu have developed a Lab-on-a-Chip technology that can test for a chosen disease with a turnaround time of just a few seconds and a detection limit of 1 ng of antigen per 1 mL of sample fluid. In contrast to other commonly used PoCD’s, this technology can be adapted for detection of various diseases in various settings. This is a great improvement to current devices on the market in specificity, sensitivity, and ease of use, therefore making it particularly useful in high-throughput, low-skill staffing environments.18 In creating disease selection criteria for Dr. Beskok and his team’s device, several factors were taken into consideration. Generally, the selection criteria consists of diseases that result in a high DALY value, are communicable, identifiable with antibody-antigen reactions, and can be tested for using urine. The diseases that were identified with this criterion were Tuberculosis and Malaria. Various antibody-antigen recommendations for diagnosis, advantages, and limitations of the proposed Point-of-Care-Device are discussed in the Proposed Disease section. In addition, current funding for each disease is overviewed. In order to make the greatest impact, deployment of the PoCD in the Sub-Saharan region, most specifically the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone are recommended. Furthermore, children under the age of 5 who suffer from malnutrition should be given special attention. Focusing in these locations and populations will best aid in accomplishing the third Sustainable Development Goal set out by the UN: to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

DOI

https://doi.org/10.25172/jour.6.1.2

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