You Can Soon Use Your Smartphone To Test For COVID-19

With the COVID-19 outbreak, scientists around the world are racing to find a vaccine, but it is equally important to ensure that people can be tested for the virus in time to know if they are infected or not.

That is precisely what Jonathan Rothberg has been thinking. Rothberg is a scientist and biotech entrepreneur from the US. And what he is working on is a smartphone-based Covid-19 test.

Just recently, Bill Gates, through Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has donated Rs 37 crore worth of at-home Covid-19 test kits for people living in the Seattle area. However, in times like this, for various reasons, not everyone can have access to the testing kit. But almost everyone owns a smartphone.

So how about developing a smartphone-based COVID-19 testing kit that is fast and cost-effective. That is what Jonathan Rothberg is trying to work on at the moment. And why there is a possibility that his project might become a reality.

Rothberg runs 4Catalyzer, an accelerator inventing smart medical devices, for instance, a portable ultrasound device delivering test results on a paired smartphone. His goal is to develop a COVID-19 test that only takes 30 minutes to give out results on a smartphone.

What only began as a discussion on Twitter more than a week ago has now become a project led by Jonathan Rothberg and joined by a whole group of volunteers.

According to Rothberg, he is contacting the Gates Foundation to work on a complementary test kit that takes less time to deliver results. The test kit from the Gates Foundation requires people to take a nasal swab and send it to a lab. The result will then come out in a few days.

Rothberg also notes that since he is focusing on faster results, there is a great chance that there will be false results.

For the smartphone-based test kit, scientists at Homodeus, a company founded by Jonathan Rothberg, are working on it. With this test kit, a person will need to take a nasal or mouth swab. Based on the instructions in the accompanying smartphone app, they will then have to dip it in three test tubes. The approach of Rothberg is to detect the Coronavirus’ DNA signature in the tubes. This explains why the results can come out after only 30 minutes.

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