I-Corps: A Smartphone Spectrometer for Field Drug Identification

执法部门需要具备在现场测试非法物质的能力。他们需要一种简单、快速、准确、明确、安全和负担得起的方法。然而，今天这个社区很难在现场识别药物，这主要是因为现场药物测试的传统化学方法的复杂性和可靠性。毒品现场测试通常涉及一名警官从试剂盒中选择一种测试，以便对有问题的未知样本进行破坏性测试。现场工具包中的许多不同测试都专门识别某些毒品家族，这使得警察对测试的选择对这一过程的效率至关重要。这些测试的结果取决于可能是细微的颜色变化，并要求用户用眼睛判断颜色。此外，混淆设备说明可能会导致测试不正确和结果不准确。因此，目前的化学测试方法容易受到人为错误的影响，并多次导致假阳性或假阴性。此外，测试中的危险化学品对用户及其设备构成威胁。与这种方法相关的痛苦引发了对一种新的现场药物测试系统的需求，该系统优于目前的方法。这项拟议的技术利用智能手机和云技术，为执法和犯罪实验室提供了一种快速、易用、可靠、安全和相对便宜的测试方法，用于在现场测试非法和常见滥用物质。利用该项目的智能手机光谱仪技术，i-Corps团队改变了执法和法医社区现场药物测试的范式。该系统由一系列专有组件组成：试纸、手持光谱仪、智能手机应用程序、参考数据库和基于云的匹配应用程序。这个i-Corps团队使用原型光谱仪和Beta应用程序与犯罪实验室合作，后者已同意与他们合作建立Beta参考库。通过事先与执法人员和犯罪实验室分析员进行的客户访谈，该小组已经从行政执法人员和毒品官员那里获得了积极的反馈和兴奋。该团队正在验证其产品的价值主张：与竞争对手的技术相比，易于使用、快速、准确、明确、安全和廉价。在该项目结束时，该小组预计将解决执法部门内与现场药物测试有关的一系列痛苦，提高法律程序的效率和效力。

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.