POC Device for Hospital Acquired Infections
June 14, 2016 | Terry Sharrer
In proof-of-principle research, bioengineers at Massachusetts General Hospital have developed a point-of-care device that can interface with a table or smartphone to report the presence of five bacterial species—E. coli, Klebsiella, Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, and Staph aureus. According to this report, “The system developed at MGH first uses extracted bacterial RNA to amplify it and perform the polymerase chain reaction procedure. The results are loaded into a small plastic vial that has optical sensors built-in. The sensors are able to identify the optical signature of specific RNA sequences that are correlated to the presence of certain bacteria in a process called Polarization Anisotropy Diagnostics.” MORE
Image Credit: MGH and MedGadget.com