Counting molecules with an ordinary cell phone
Diagnostic health care is often restricted in areas with limited resources, because the procedures required to detect many of the molecular markers that can diagnose diseases are too complex or expensive to be used outside of a central laboratory. Researchers in the lab of Rustem Ismagilov, Caltech's Ethel Wilson Bowles and Robert Bowles Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and director of the Jacobs Institute for Molecular Engineering for Medicine, are inventing new technologies to help bring emerging diagnostic capabilities out of laboratories and to the point of care. Among the important requirements for such diagnostic devices is that the results—or readouts—be robust against a variety of environmental conditions and user errors.