Diagnostics For All Liver-Function Test

Diagnostics For All Liver-Function Test Jeff Harris

A quarter of the 13 million patients worldwide who are undergoing treatment for HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis will die not from their diseases, but from liver complications caused by the treatment itself. In many cases, all it would take to prevent their death is access to a regular screening process that would tell doctors when to back off on treatment, but until now that process has required $1,000 plastic pumps, $100 computer chips and $30,000 microscopes—resources entirely unavailable to millions of patients in the developing world. Diagnostics for All’s “lab-on-a-chip,” on the other hand, costs less than a penny to make. Drop a blood sample onto the stamp-size paper chip, and 15 minutes later it changes color to indicate liver health. The company shipped its first batch of chips to India this year. $0.05/chip (est.)