Card-sized labs on way

Tuesday December 14th, 2010

Credit card sized devices that will perform laboratory quality analysis for GPs may soon enter mass production in Europe, it has been announced.

Developers say the EU-backed project has successfully led to the creation of a "health chip".

The new chip should be able to test for bacteria, viruses and kinds of cancer, they say.

So far prototypes have been used to test for cervical cancer.

Liv Furuberg, of the Scandinavian research centre SINTEF, based in Norway, said: "The health chip can analyse your blood or cells for eight different diseases.

"What these diseases have in common is that they are identified by means of special biomarkers that are found in the blood sample. These 'labels' may be proteins that either ought or ought not to be there, DNA fragments or enzymes.

"This little chip is capable of carrying out the same processes as a large laboratory, and not only does it perform them faster, but the results are also far more accurate.

"The doctor simply inserts the card into a little machine, adds a few drop of the sample taken from the patient via a tube in the cardholder, and out come the results."

She added: "Our lab-on-a-chip projects have shown that it is possible to perform rapid, straightforward diagnostic analyses with the aid of microchips, and we are now working on several different types of chip, including a protein analysis chip for acute inflammations."

The centre has now gained additional EU funding to develop mass production procedures for the chips.

Tags: Europe | General Health

Printer friendly page