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Ugandan wins Africa prize for bloodless malaria test
- forkLding 8y agoInteresting, wonder if this can substitute for a blood test, my mum often complained that blood tests (using needles) were hard for my grandma because her arteries/veins aren't easily spottable and bring a lot of hassle to an old lady.
- simonbyrne 8y agoAny details on how it works? There isn't a lot of technical info on the website: http://matibabu.thinkitlimited.com/ http://matibabu.thinkitlimited.com/
- wollstonecraft 8y agoThis is a pulse oximeter.
- sgtmas2006 8y agoI presume it's the logic that goes along with the pulse oximeter that is making the test important.
- John_KZ 8y agoIt is. I'm afraid I'll have to side with the cynics until further info is give on it's principles of operation. The Plasmodium parasite doesn't seem to have any special characteristics (ie size, spectral response) that would make it detectable by such a device. You can skip the sample size issue by assuming the diagnostic will run for hours or days, but I don't see any theoretical foundation this device could be based on. Also the obsession of the website with the smartphone interface is kind of sketchy and makes it look (more) like a scam to me. Edit: I looked further into it, the price is given by the royal academy of engineering. Taken from their website [1]: " Gitta wins the first prize of UK £25,000 (124 million Ugandan shillings). At an awards ceremony in Nairobi, Kenya on 13 June 2018, four finalists from across sub-Saharan Africa delivered presentations, before Africa Prize judges and a live audience voted for the most promising engineering innovation." Which means that a live audience of non-technical people were involved in the choice, and, to my opinion, from the rest of the content, this is a feel-good kind of competition with soft goals like promoting innovation and training young people, not the kind of competition that awards working ideas. [1] https://www.raeng.org.uk/news/news-releases/2018/june/ugandan-innovation-wins-the-africa-prize-for-engin https://www.raeng.org.uk/news/news-releases/2018/june/uganda...
- maxerickson 8y agoThe (short) article makes it clear enough that they aren't targeting the plasmodium directly: Its red beam can detect changes in the colour, shape and concentration of red blood cells - all of which are affected by malaria. So that particular line of cynicism is more illiterate than it is cynical.
- rossdavidh 8y agoIt is probably mean-spirited of me, but the first thing that passed through my mind after reading this article is "like Theranos, except in Africa". Hopefully, I'm wrong, and this will be an amazing game-changing medical device that saves many lives.
- dbasedweeb 8y agoIt would be mean-spirited to want that to be the case, it’s somewhere on the skeptical-cynical spectrum to think it’s likely. Don’t be so hard on yourself.
- tialaramex 8y agoMaybe. However the idea of Theranos was it would replace tests you were going to do anyway. It needed to be just as good. In some contexts a less invasive, easier to do, or just plain cheaper test can make sense for screening even if it's not good enough to replace your other tests. So there's a middle ground between "replaces blood tests for malaria" and useless. My pathologist friend was telling me that because machines are still very bad at figuring out if cells from a smear might be cancer but very good at figuring out if a sample has HPV fragments they've switched to letting the machines check samples for HPV and then, since cervical cancer is almost invariably caused by HPV a human looks at the smears for the HPV positive patients to search for cancer. Humans aren't great at this either, but this approach means each individual worker spends more time looking at the smears that actually might have cancer, so hopefully that lets them do a better job.
- Waterluvian 8y agoI thought the exact same thing but from an optimistic perspective: let's show Holmes how real scientists, real entrepreneurs practice their craft.
- rossdavidh 8y agoThat would be an awesome outcome! Also, it occurs to me that by being far away from a hotbed of hype for investment, the chances of it being looked at uncritically are less. So hopefully it will be a good comparison.
- vezycash 8y agoHere's a video of it in action. It looks like a finger print scanner connected to a phone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p31LN6IyIrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p31LN6IyIrY
- vezycash 8y agoAssuming this device works. And worries about production, commercialization and raising funds in a VC-less environment are bothering these guys what advice would you give them? How would they outsource production or fabrication without large capital? Can they sell their device for cash and then produce on demand? I'm asking because once in a while, I read about smart creations from different African nations. In the interviews, a common complaint is "If we can get a sponsor..." And that's where their story ends. Note: African esp. West African transactions is heavily cash based. So crowdfunding is out of the question?
- zakum1 8y agoActually, East Africa has a vibrant startup and investment scene for both local and global investors. See, for example, http://ventureburn.com/2017/11/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-east-african-startup-landscape/ http://ventureburn.com/2017/11/everything-you-need-to-know-a.... It is worth looking into for talent and opportunities.
- fapjacks 8y agoYes, absolutely! And everyone in Uganda (and Kenya) has a mobile phone, and a lot of people use them for payments since banking isn't universal there, and mobile payments have emerged as a core mechanism for the secure transfer of funds between people (and also e.g. payments to businesses). The article hints at this by saying the test results are "ready to be shared to a mobile phone in a minute". Lots of people focus on Nigeria when talking about the startup scene in Africa, but I rather think it's East Africa that is in a better position to foster a tech industry.