Harvard's George Whitesides Invents 1 Cent Paper Chip Medical Lab

by Edmund Jenks | February 26, 2010 at 06:47 am

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Automating medical tests on the human body just got a lot easier thanks to the equivalent of a medical lab on a paper chip that can diagnose a wide array of human conditions for about one cent.

The developer/inventor of this testing breakthrough, George Whitesides, Harvard chemist, has created a prototype "chip" technology out of paper, that could help diagnose HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases for just a penny each time.

How the Chip Works

According to CNN, a drop of blood on one side of the paper chip results in a colorful tree-like pattern that tells physicians or nurses whether a person has certain diseases.

Water-repellent comic-book ink helps channel the blood into the tree-like pattern, as several layers of treated paper react to the blood and create the telling colors much like litmus paper testing, but this approach performs several diagnoses on one paper chip.

Whitesides explained that the colors can also reveal the severity of a disease rather than just saying if a person has it or not.

Cheap Diagnostic Medical Tools for the Developing World

It's not the most sophisticated lab-on-a-chip created, but that's the point -- many of these could become cheap diagnostic tools for a developing world that often lacks physicians and clinics.

Mobile phones with cameras can be used to share the pattern results from the paper chip from anywhere cell service is available. Patients in Africa or Asia, where cellphones have become wildly popular even in the poorest regions, could send the photos on to medical centers for proper diagnosis.