John Lewandowski, a PhD student in mechanical engineering at MIT, created a medical device that can detect malaria in five seconds from a drop of blood.
The battery-operated Rapid Assessment of Malaria device costs $100 to $120. RAM contains a circuit board, a few magnets and a laser on the inside with an LCD screen, secure digital card slot and plastic disposable cuvette on the outside of the device.
Since malaria parasites create magnetic iron crystals in the blood, the device diagnoses the disease by using magnets to draw these crystals into a linear pattern the laser can identify.
Since many rural communities in Africa and Asia don't have the medical infrastructure for microscopic tests and a diagnostic test can't detect malaria in its early stages, RAM offers a much quicker and cheaper diagnosis.
Dr. Lewandowski's startup behind the device, Disease Diagnostic Group, sells RAM in limited quantities to physicians in small clinics and healthcare workers conducting malaria field tests in India.
He expects RAM devices to be more widely available for purchase in a year and eventually used in every high-risk community in the world.\
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