COVID-19 sensor could bring daily testing to iPhones
A project to create a low-cost Zika virus sensor for the iPhone is being reworked to test for COVID-19, one which could allow people to perform daily tests for the virus without requiring invasive nasal swabs.
A prototype of the COVID-19 sensor
Current testing for COVID-19 typically relies on a medical professional swabbing at the back of a person's nasal cavity, a procedure that is uncomfortable and too invasive for its critics. In a University of Utah project, it is hoped that an alternative method will enable for quick and cheap testing, while also making it more comfortable.
Originally created to detect the Zika virus in 2016, the project led by Professor Massood Tabib-Azar aims to rework the sensor so that it could perform a similar detection of COVID-19, and potentially doing so within 60 seconds, reports Metro.
The project received a boost in early May, receiving a $200,000 National Science Foundation Rapid Response Research grant to further fund its progress.
"We started this project about 12 months ago," said the professor. "The main idea was to enable people to have their own personal sensor to detect Zika in places that they travel. The plan is to program it to identify COVID-19 instead."
A prototype device has been created, measuring an inch wide, one that connects to a host device over Bluetooth and drawing power from a smartphone's charging port. After opening a companion app, the sensor requires a particle of saliva to be deposited for a reading.
DNA strands in the virus bind onto proteins on the sensor, in turn creating electrical resistance and triggered a positive result in the app. Once a test is completed, the sample can be destroyed using an electrical current, leaving it ready to be reused in another test.
Along with collecting airborne particles, the sensor also works to detect the virus on surfaces, via the use of a swab. Details of a positive result could feasibly be sent to an authority, such as the CDC, for tracking purposes.
The researchers claim that sensor will cost consumers about $55, and would be reusable without needing any consumables, limiting its long-term cost. By making it cheap, the sensor could feasibly make testing widespread, helping control and curtail the spread of the virus.
Currently the device is expected to enter a clinical trial in July, with a view to making it available to the public by August at the earliest.
Another application from 2016 proposed an environmental sensor in a speaker enclosure, with the nature of the speaker enabling for the drawing in, capture, and expulsion of air, water, and other materials for sampling. The included sensors could range from a volatile organic compound sensor and particulate sensor, to more traditional gas, moisture, and temperature sensors.
Environmental protection also appears in an April patent, one which proposes an Apple Watch could detect water and determine if the user is drowning.
On May 14, Stanford University's Health Innovation Lab opened enrollment for a study that aims to see if wearable devices like the Apple Watch could be used to track and identify diseases like COVID-19.
A week earlier on May 7, Apple awarded $10 million from its Advanced Manufacturing Fund plus manufacturing machinery design assistance to COVID-19 test kit collection equipment manufacturer COPAN Diagnostics.
A prototype of the COVID-19 sensor
Current testing for COVID-19 typically relies on a medical professional swabbing at the back of a person's nasal cavity, a procedure that is uncomfortable and too invasive for its critics. In a University of Utah project, it is hoped that an alternative method will enable for quick and cheap testing, while also making it more comfortable.
Originally created to detect the Zika virus in 2016, the project led by Professor Massood Tabib-Azar aims to rework the sensor so that it could perform a similar detection of COVID-19, and potentially doing so within 60 seconds, reports Metro.
The project received a boost in early May, receiving a $200,000 National Science Foundation Rapid Response Research grant to further fund its progress.
"We started this project about 12 months ago," said the professor. "The main idea was to enable people to have their own personal sensor to detect Zika in places that they travel. The plan is to program it to identify COVID-19 instead."
A prototype device has been created, measuring an inch wide, one that connects to a host device over Bluetooth and drawing power from a smartphone's charging port. After opening a companion app, the sensor requires a particle of saliva to be deposited for a reading.
DNA strands in the virus bind onto proteins on the sensor, in turn creating electrical resistance and triggered a positive result in the app. Once a test is completed, the sample can be destroyed using an electrical current, leaving it ready to be reused in another test.
Along with collecting airborne particles, the sensor also works to detect the virus on surfaces, via the use of a swab. Details of a positive result could feasibly be sent to an authority, such as the CDC, for tracking purposes.
The researchers claim that sensor will cost consumers about $55, and would be reusable without needing any consumables, limiting its long-term cost. By making it cheap, the sensor could feasibly make testing widespread, helping control and curtail the spread of the virus.
Currently the device is expected to enter a clinical trial in July, with a view to making it available to the public by August at the earliest.
Detection Potential
The use of electronics to detect viruses is an area Apple has considered for a while, according to patents. Apple has patent applications relating to the use of sensors to detect poisonous gas and airborne chemicals, including one from 2019 using selectively adsorbent layers that allow specific compounds to pass through to electrodes, as well as heating elements to refresh the sensor over time.Another application from 2016 proposed an environmental sensor in a speaker enclosure, with the nature of the speaker enabling for the drawing in, capture, and expulsion of air, water, and other materials for sampling. The included sensors could range from a volatile organic compound sensor and particulate sensor, to more traditional gas, moisture, and temperature sensors.
Environmental protection also appears in an April patent, one which proposes an Apple Watch could detect water and determine if the user is drowning.
On May 14, Stanford University's Health Innovation Lab opened enrollment for a study that aims to see if wearable devices like the Apple Watch could be used to track and identify diseases like COVID-19.
A week earlier on May 7, Apple awarded $10 million from its Advanced Manufacturing Fund plus manufacturing machinery design assistance to COVID-19 test kit collection equipment manufacturer COPAN Diagnostics.
Comments
As it is, places like Pennsylvania have had 70% of their deaths in nursing homes and other similar care facilities despite the lockdown for everyone. The most vulnerable weren’t being adequately protected but the economy still suffers.
Seriously, I don’t know what your qualifications are with respect to infectious diseases, but this is way out of my level of expertise. I’ll leave this to the brilliant minds of science and will take my queues from them.
Social distancing and lockdown flattened the curve, that's fact. It bought us time to learn about the virus, how to treat it, and hopefully ramp up PPE and testing supply. Had we not done so many more would be dead.
You can’t protect the most vulnerable without social distancing and measures taken by all. 14 day asymptomatic incubation period is what does it — you feel fine and have no idea you’re shedding virus.
But it's not even about just the "most vulnerable" (in your head, old people). My brother and his wife are in their 50s with no unusual conditions and over the weekend were hospitalized with COVID19 and double pneumonia, and real low oxygen - we don't know what's going to happen. Their son is in his late 20s with it, similar condition. This isn’t just about old people.
Again — this isn’t just old people. You can't fix the economy until you contain the pandemic. Since they blew it at the start, the lockdown was the only other option. It worked, as deaths are trending down.
1) "Hysteria" based on "inaccurate predictions and models" — completely ignoring the fact that the actions taken due to this perceived hysteria, namely mitigation measures and social distancing, are what caused the lower numbers and thus the shifting of the models. It's beyond frustrating that this has to be explained, but some of those high estimates would've been easily hit had we done nothing at all.
2) Of course we should've had better testing early on. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why we didn't do that. The timeline is pretty well established at this point.
3) "Locking down people who are at very low risk" completely ignores the entire issue of asymptomatic carriers, as well as the fact that it's not entirely clear who is at what level of risk as we see young, healthy people get very very sick or die from this. This is also fairly well documented at this point, and there are still a lot of unknowns in figuring out this virus.
4) The appeal to emotion fallacy over failure to protect nursing home patients somehow pointing to failure of all mitigation measures as a whole.
Somehow all this adds up to a testing device not being of much use now, even as we ignore the reality on the ground and plow straight ahead into tossing everyone — including those nursing home patients and their caregivers — back in the water with the sharks. At this point I'm just waiting curiously to see how many bodies have to pile up before this magical thinking that the economy is more important than human lives starts to fail.
I understand testing is not curing, but it would be helpful to know to go to the doctor quickly in our circumstances if a quick test were available.