Designing A One-Cent Test for Jaundice in the Developing World
Jaundice is characterized by yellowing of the skin and affects about 60 percent of infants worldwide. The condition is caused by elevated levels of bilirubin, and for some infants - including about 2.5 million each year in sub-Saharan Africa - bilirubin can build up to levels that can cause permanent brain damage. Most physicians in the developing world diagnose jaundice by looking for signs of yellowing skin but because it is difficult to accurately gauge severity by sight, there's a dual risk of both undertreatment and overtreatment. A team of Rice University undergraduate senior engineering students called BiliQuant is developing a jaundice test system that uses small, low-cost paper strips. Testing would involve pricking the baby's heel and collecting a tiny spot of blood on the paper. The paper would then be inserted into a slot in a small machine, where inexpensive LED lights would shine through the paper. An onboard microprocessor will convert the acquired signal into the concentration of bilirubin present, and the value obtained will be read out on a small LCD screen. The estimated cost per test is one penny.
Transcript
00:00:04 team Billy Kwan is a senior design team at Rice University working to develop a low-cost jaundice diagnostic for the developing world our project is sponsored in part with rice is beyond traditional borders program which is a global health technologies development initiative and clinical partners in the field namely and Malawi have long asked for a jaundice diagnostic this is
00:00:25 important because jaundice is a disease that affects infants worldwide actually 60% of all infants have jaundice and what jaundice is is the accumulation of certain protein in the blood bilirubin which is what we're seeking to measure which is why our team name is Billy Kwan we have a two component approach team jaundice diagnosis first is a paper-based cuvette that we have
00:00:45 developed and so what the user does is takes a drop of blood and spots it onto this piece of paper and the blood will separate out into whole blood and plasma from the separated plasma we can then measure the absorbance of the protein bilirubin so what happens is the user inserts the cuvette into the device and these lights these LEDs will shine through the sample and some of the light
00:01:07 will be absorbed by the sample but the remaining light will be read by these photo detectors and the photo detector signal will be sent through a printed circuit board and some signal processing into an Arduino microcontroller and from that we've developed some equations that can be used to convert the signal into a meaningful of bilirubin concentration that a clinician can use to make a
00:01:27 diagnosis this is a really unique aspect in the sense that we can measure bilirubin right at the bedside without using a certain future any other major lab reagents that may not be available at the developing world