- A Filipino-American professor in Florida wins big in a competition that aims to produce non-invasive, handheld digital platforms to detect certain diseases
- He and his collaborators invented the “clip-cam technology” that can detect not just mal
ariaand anemia but also COVID-19 using saliva - The device can be self-administered without any medical or professional help
The future test in COVID detection could be through your saliva and it is invented by a Filipino-American professor and his team of researchers.
Dr. Rhoel Dinglasan, a University of Florida (UF) professor and his collaborators, bagged the second prize in a technology competition sponsored by the National Health Institute Technology Accelerator Challenge (NTAC). The competition aims to produce non-invasive, handheld digital platforms to detect sickle cell disease (SCD), malaria, and anemia.
Dinglasan’s team invented a smartphone-based, rapid saliva test that can detect COVID-19 as well as malaria and anemia. They innovated a “clip-cam technology” wherein “an adapter is attached to a smartphone that allows for a detection cassette to be inserted into a slot. The camera flash is used to excite the detection system in the cassette, which can then be read by a smartphone app. The results are expected within 15 minutes or less.
Company CEO Bala Raja, Ph.D. of Luminostics, a start-up company based in California, partnered with Dinglasan for the challenge.
Raja said to UF Health, “I thought there would be great synergy between his group’s biomarker discovery skills and our platform for rapid diagnostics.
“We will leverage our leading-edge CLIP platform for the sensitive detection of the novel coronavirus as well as established protein and serological salivary biomarkers for malaria, anemia and COVID-19” Dinglasan said in an article by UF Health.
The test can be self-administered, without the assistance of any healthcare professional and no laboratory needed.
His team will receive $200,000. The total competition prize is worth $1 million.
