Optical Smart Malaria Diagnost
Themes: Life Science & Health, Social Impact
Proof of principle
A TRL is a measure to indicate the matureness of a developing technology. When an innovative idea is discovered it is often not directly suitable for application. Usually such novel idea is subjected to further experimentation, testing and prototyping before it can be implemented. The image below shows how to read TRL’s to categorise the innovative ideas.
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Why?
Prompt, accurate and timely malaria diagnosis reduces unnecessary treatment, drug-drug interactions, and chances on drug resistant parasites. We are developing the Optical Smart Malaria Diagnost (OSMD) for this purpose.
How?
Uniquely, the OSMD uses multiple optical imaging techniques together in order to be able to distinguish the plasmodium parasites from other material in the blood. We aim for a low-cost, sufficiently sensitive and selective device, that is field-compatible and requires minimal human intervention.
When?
Once the multimodal approach has been validated, a prototype could be fabricated and field-tested. Though the current focus is malaria diagnosis, once developed it's relatively easy to adapt the device to other diseases.
Temitope Agbana MSc