One of the finalists in the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE is i-calQ, a Salt Lake City, Utah firm that’s developed a portable smartphone-based diagnostic technology that it hopes can bring clinical care to remote parts of the world, and maybe even reach your home. The system integrates a smartphone app, a biosensor, and a disposable test cassette to be able to spot specific compounds in blood or saliva.
So far the company has focused on designing a test for thyroid function that measures relevant hormone levels in blood, something typically requiring a lab and a few spare days to get the results. The i-calQ test, on the other hand, takes about twenty minutes from start to finish and doesn’t require any specialists or special lab equipment to perform. A blood drop is simply drawn from the finger, applied to the cassette, mixed with a chemical buffer, and after 15 minutes the cassette is inserted into the sensor that’s attached to the phone. The smartphone’s camera and built-in light are then used to help read what the biosensor is seeing.
Here’s the device being demonstrated in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia to local nomads:
Device info page: i-calQ…
Flashbacks: Nokia and XPRIZE Announce Finalists of the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE; Elfi-Tech mDLS Sensor for Consumer Devices Detects Variety of Blood Characteristics
