Using your phone to diagnose disease or track your medical condition is the holy grail for remote health monitoring.

So far it’s been impractical to combine the two in a single device. Tech companies don’t want the regulatory headaches that would come from labeling phones medical devices.

But University of Cincinnati engineers have come up with the next best thing.

UC professor Chong Ahn designed a tiny portable lab device that plugs into a phone, connecting it automatically to a doctor’s office through a custom app UC developed. With a single drop of blood or saliva on a custom plastic lab chip UC designed, the device smaller than a credit card can diagnose infectious diseases.

And while Ahn's latest study did not expressly look at coronavirus, he said it would have similar applications in diagnosing infectious diseases or tracking health conditions like depression and anxiety.

The phone provides the power and test protocol to the lab chip. A patient simply puts a single-use plastic lab chip into his or her mouth then plugs that into a slot in the box to test the saliva.