On-the-spot AIDS test: S. Africans to get revolutionary smartphone gadget

Published time: September 03, 2012 13:06
Edited time: September 03, 2012 17:06
AFP Photo / Rodger Bosch

A smartphone application developed by South Korean and South African scientists will allow users to diagnose AIDS infections. Once complete, the app will be released in rural South Africa, where current tests are both remote and expensive.

­The new gadget, dubbed the ‘Smartscope,’ consists of a small one-millimeter (0.04-inch) microscope and light that clip over a smartphone's camera, and the accompanying software, AFP reported.

A standard chip containing a blood sample slides into the gadget, underneath the microscope. The phone app then photographs the sample and analyses the blood for a T-cell count, ascertaining the overall health of the subject’s immune system.

"Our idea was to obtain images and analyze images on this smartphone using applications," Jung Kyung Kim, a professor in biomedical engineering at South Korea’s Kookmin University said.

A T-cell (or CD4 cell) count is used to diagnose the immune system’s overall health. T-cells are the white blood cells that help the body fight disease and infection. The HIV virus infects T-cells in the body and uses them to replicate itself. A person carrying the virus will therefore have a lower T-cell count than an uninfected individual, as well as a weakened immune system.

Eventually, if a person’s T-cell count drops below a certain threshold, they are diagnosed with AIDS. 

Kim hopes to begin clinical trials as early as next year.

A similar device being developed in the US would also conduct tests, and then send the results to a remote computer for analysis. The Smartscope app would be able to perform that function independently, recalling technology out of ‘Star Trek.’

"In community health mobile technology is not a gimmick. It becomes an essential part of access," Professor Jannie Hugo said. Hugo is the head of the family medicine department at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and is associated with the study.

The app is being released in South Africa and Swaziland, which have been hit hard by the disease – almost six million South Africans are HIV-positive, and a quarter of adults in Swaziland are infected.

Comments (3)

Awareness (unregistered) 03.09.2012 17:18

"This Awareness indicates that entities seeking security upon this plane shall find it is a fleeting Quest; and entities identifying with the physical, shall find it a poor foundation. Entities who are aware, and identify with consciousness itself, who are aware that the universe is teeming with life, that space itself is alive, and that to identify with the Akasha or spirit of the universe is the only security and stability that is permanent and lasting; these entities can survive psychologically, without great stress and fear, until that time when they leave this plane. This Awareness indicates that those who cling in fear to the physical matter, these entities shall not enjoy the plane, the physical life in which they reside. This Awareness suggests that you not make your permanent home the physical plane, but consider this as a brief visit from higher dimensions, and that you consider your true home that which is in Celestria, that which is in the Spirit, the Akasha, the consciousness of the universe. This Awareness indicates that wherein this is experienced, this becomes a new level of awareness, a new reality, one which can give you the sense of being Who in Fact, You Really Are. This Awareness indicates that meanwhile, you may enjoy the vacation upon this plane, or the sentence which you are enduring upon this plane,--depending on how you wish to view your presence here." By Cosmic Awareness (GREAT SPIRIT) :) LOVE, Oneness, LAUGHTER and The LIGHT of God Almighty, All That IS, GREAT SPIRIT :)

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Clever (unregistered) 03.09.2012 15:32

How to take the future and insure the medicine is modern.

Does not dawn on the minds of pre-industrial that nature already has all the cures, AND "medicine" that has "developed" so far in the current century, well there are certainly advancements worth mentioning.

W ith all the birth manipulations globally, not to mention all the completely unnecessary vaccinations, add chemicals in the air, water, food, et Cetera, there is no such concept of how to heal the intentional MONSTER co-creations by and through the so-called "government Leaders especially that have strings pulling the brains from out their arses," clearly.  Wanting to lead a planet of out-of-controlled experimented on protoplasm.

P lease get real soon, too before it's really too, too, late.

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Desmond (unregistered) 03.09.2012 13:35

A question to South Africa: Why is the tester not wearing any gloves? Tuturite Answer: Ha, ha ha ha, you question makes me laugh! Ha ha ha ha! Well, eh, well, eh, she is immune and besides she has not had sex in two years. Hey, you know, there rubber gloves are also known to cause cancer, did you know that?

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