Microfluidic Medical Diagnostics Devices: Instructive Student Projects for Product Development in the Coming Decade

摘要

Portable devices and systems that enable medical diagnostics outside of traditional laboratory settings will likely be an important component of future healthcare. The recent SARS and Ebola pandemics underscore the pressing need for simple, low-cost, easy-to-use devices to rapidly test for pathogens in places such as airports, border crossings, and schools. So-called point of care diagnostics at doctors' and dentists' offices, hospital bedsides, rural clinics, and even at home, will foster more efficient, sustainable and streamlined delivery of healthcare, especially for the developing world. Point-of-Care (POC) diagnostics and other field-deployable bioassay test devices can be realized with microscale fluidic systems. Typically, a POC test cartridge is formed on credit card-sized plastic substrates that hosts a miniaturized network of chambers, conduits, filters, valves and flow control components. The cartridge or 'chip' is mated with a portable processing device that provides the chip with controlled temperatures, fluid actuation and flow control, and optical sensing, such as for measuring a fluorescence signal. These microfluidic "Lab on a Chip" (LOC) devices can process and analyze medical specimens (whole blood, plasma, saliva, urine), food and water, and environmental samples to detect viruses, bacteria, parasites, toxins, and bioterrorism agents. Continued progress and affordability in rapid prototyping (3D printers, laser cutters, soft lithography), Computer-Aided Design (CAD), microcontrollers, Smartphone cameras and other CCD-based imaging, miniature sensors, freeze-dried reagents, and optical components and materials (e.g., LEDs, laser diodes, photodiodes, optical fibers, filters, fluorescent dyes) make the design, fabrication, and testing of Lab on a Chip diagnostics devices accessible to engineering students. We describe Student Design Projects to demonstrate LOC diagnostics devices to meet current needs for healthcare, public safety, and sustainable development. These projects provide a gateway for engineering students to learn biomedical applications of engineering, gain experience with product development, and integrate knowledge of materials, instrumentation, control, rapid prototyping, and applied optics in products with considerable near-term commercial potential and/or as appropriate technology for resource-limited areas of the world.