The need for mobile, robust, accurate and easy to use devices to detect emerging infections and help control infectious disease outbreaks has gained particular prominence since the CoVID-19 pandemic. A group of researchers based in China have developed a tool that appears to generate results that match gold standard technologies to address this need.
Small, Dynamic and Powerful Disease Detection Device
The WeD mini is a compact, palm-sized, diagnostic device, that can detect disease in real time. It has a wide range of potential applications around disease detection, as well as personal and public health monitoring and surveillance. A compact, palm-sized isothermal fluorescent diagnostic device, the WeD mini can reportedly be used equally effectively for point of care service, or in at-home diagnostics, and is adaptable to a range of diagnostic techniques.
The intelligent IoT device integrates real-time detection and automatic interpretation of results using a smartphone via a tailored cloud storage system ‘EzDx Cloud’. The EzDx cloud - now able to incorporate WeD mini - is a comprehensive disease detection system. It includes a user-friendly mini-program, a portable Point-of-Care fluorescence detector, and a diagnostic information management platform (EzDx Cloud).
The researchers were able to demonstrate high sensitivity and specificity in detecting common respiratory viruses, with higher accuracy than rapid antigen and nucleic acid amplication tests, and equivalent performance to the gold standard real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in detecting SARS-CoV2 and influenza viruses. The WeD mini device uses isothermal amplification methods and can operate at constant temperature. The device can support assays at varied fluorescent intensities and at temperatures between 0 and 100ºC. The authors report 100% sensitivity and specificity when the device was used with a One-Tube / One-Step loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP-CRISPR) assay to detect CoVID-19 and H1N1.
Clouded with Disease
The features of this innovative Internet of Things (IoT) molecular diagnostic device can currently be associated with a WeChat mini-program via the EzDx cloud, for simultaneous detection and spatiotemporal mapping of respiratory pathogens. By leveraging the widespread use of social media, this device has potenrial to seemlessly integrate with social platforms, removing the need for additional app downloads and installations.
In partnership, the WeD mini and ExDx cloud offer a glimpse at the possibilities of integrated personal and public health possibilities in the cloud.
References
A compact, palm-sized isothermal fluorescent diagnostic intelligent IoT device for personal health monitoring and beyond via one-tube/one-step LAMP-CRISPR assay Manuscript https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956566324009527#bib39
Mini-Program Enabled IoT Intelligent Molecular Diagnostic Device for Co-Detection and Spatiotemporal Mapping of Infectious Disease Pathogens Manuscript https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.analchem.4c01762