I-Corps: A Smartphone Spectrometer for Field Drug Identification

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Law enforcement requires the ability to test illegal substances in the field. They need a method that is simple, rapid, accurate, definitive, safe, and affordable. However, this community has a difficult time identifying drugs in the field today, mainly due to complexities and reliability of the conventional chemistry-based method for field drug testing. Drug field testing typically involves a police officer choosing one of many tests from a kit in order to destructively test an unknown sample in question. Many of the different tests in field kits specifically identify certain families of drugs, which make the police officer's choice of test vital to the efficiency of this process. The results of these tests are dependent on what may be a subtle color change and require the user to judge the color by eye. In addition, confusing device instructions can lead to improper testing and inaccurate results. For this reason, the current chemical test method is subject to human error and has led to false positives or negatives on many occasions. Also, hazardous chemicals in the test represent a threat to users and their equipment. The pains associated with this method give rise to the need for a new field drug test system that is superior to current methods. The proposed technology leverages smartphone and cloud technologies to providing law enforcement and crime labs with a quick, easy-to-use, dependable, safe, and relatively inexpensive testing method for testing illicit and commonly-abused substances in the field. With this project's smartphone spectrometer technology, this I-Corps team changes the paradigm for field drug testing in the law enforcement and forensic communities. The system consists of a collection of proprietary components: a test strip, a handheld spectrometer, a smartphone app, a reference data library and a cloud-based matching application. This I-Corps team uses the prototype spectrometer and beta app to work with crime labs who have agreed to cooperate with them in establishing a beta reference library. Through prior customer interviews with law enforcement officers and crime lab analysts, the team has already received positive feedback and excitement from administrative law enforcement personnel and narcotics officers. The team is validating its product's value proposition: easy-to-use, rapid, accurate, definitive, safe, and inexpensive compared to competing technologies. At the end of this project, the team expects to solve a collection of pains associated with field drug testing within law enforcement, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the legal process.