Developing Multiplexed COVID-19 Diagnostic Methods for Medical Surveillance

COVID-19是一种高度传染性疾病，对医学诊断构成挑战。迫切需要快速、准确和便携的设备来提高医疗监测能力，提供即时检测。检测COVID-19抗体可以补充现有技术，并提供诊断和人群监测。20世纪60年代便携式血糖仪的发明，以及随后的创新，使得能够在不需要实验室设备或专业知识的情况下有效地分析糖尿病患者的血糖。这使得医学实验室之外的快速，准确和便携式分析方法成为可能。现时，市民可从零售商店购买葡萄糖仪，而有关测试的供应足以应付需求。然而，检测COVID-19的情况并非如此。从患者身上采集的COVID-19样本只能由医学专业人员在医学实验室环境中进行分析。该项目的目标是开发一种更便携和自动化的COVID-19诊断方法，需要最少的操作专业知识，提供医疗诊断并增强资源贫乏社区的能力。

COVID-19 is a highly contagious disease that poses a challenge in medical diagnosis. Rapid, accurate and portable devices are urgently needed to increase medical surveillance capability, providing point-of-care testing. Detection of COVID-19 antibodies can complement the existing techniques and provide diagnosis and population surveillance. Invention of portable glucose meters in the 1960s, followed by subsequent innovations, enabled effective analysis of blood glucose in diabetic patients without the requirement for laboratory equipment or expertise. This allowed rapid, accurate and portable analytical methodology outside of medical laboratories. Glucose meters are now readily available to the public from retail stores and the availability of the testing is sufficient to meet demand. However, this is not the case for detecting COVID-19. COVID-19 samples collected from patients can only be analyzed by medical professionals in medical laboratory settings. The objectives of this project are to develop a more portable and automated COVID-19 diagnostic methodology requiring minimum operational expertise, provide medical diagnosis and empower resource-poor communities.