kolkata

Updated: Oct 19, 2017 14:30 IST

A Kolkata-based engineering college has claimed to have developed a smartphone application and a device that will detect malaria within seconds at a much lower price than the charges of conventional pathological tests.

Researchers and professors of the Institute of Engineering and Management, Salt Lake (IEMS) have now approached the Union health ministry for recognition of the device-cum-app.

The Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur, near Kolkata, has provided the technical support for the development of the app-cum-device.

To detect malaria, a life-threatening endemic disease, an individual has to purchase the device that will be priced about Rs 70 and download the app in the mobile phone.

The device that contains a micro camera, has to be connected with the camera of the phone. A drop of blood pricked from the finger of the infected person has to be placed on a dice attached to the device.

“The camera will take the picture of the drop of blood. The picture will have to be uploaded on the app. The remote testing facility will need only 10 seconds to send an accurate result informing the person whether he has malaria or not,” claimed IEMS professor Nilanjana Dutta Roy.

Dutta Roy and her fellow researchers, Nilanjan Daw and Debapriya Paul, are now waiting for the approval of the ministry.

“We are expecting the approval soon since the initial reaction from the ministry was extremely positive,” she said.

Each device will be able to conduct multiple tests that will help an infected person to regularly monitor the response of the medication.

“In conventional pathological tests, it takes almost seven to eight hours to get the blood report and it costs about Rs 200. The device will bring down the cost to about Rs 10 per test and the result will be available in seconds,” she claimed.

“We want to train social workers in remote villages so that they can conduct door-to-door blood tests using this device-cum-app,” she said.