I-Corps: A Smartphone Spectrometer for Field Drug Identification

执法需要有能力在实地测试非法物质。 他们需要一种简单、快速、准确、确定、安全和负担得起的方法。 然而，这个社区有一个困难的时间来确定药物在今天的领域，主要是由于复杂性和可靠性的传统化学为基础的方法进行现场药物测试。毒品现场测试通常涉及警官从试剂盒中选择许多测试之一，以便对未知样品进行破坏性测试。现场工具包中的许多不同测试专门识别某些药物家族，这使得警官选择测试对这一过程的效率至关重要。这些测试的结果取决于什么可能是一个微妙的颜色变化，并要求用户通过眼睛来判断颜色。此外，混乱的器械说明书可能导致不正确的测试和不准确的结果。因此，目前的化学测试方法容易受到人为错误的影响，并在许多情况下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起了对上级当前方法的新的现场药物测试系统的需要。该技术利用智能手机和云技术为执法和犯罪实验室提供快速，易于使用，可靠，安全和相对便宜的测试方法，用于测试现场的非法和常见滥用物质。 通过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界的实地药物测试模式。 该系统由一系列专有组件组成：试纸、手持式光谱仪、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测试版应用程序与犯罪实验室合作，这些实验室同意与他们合作建立一个测试版参考图书馆。 通过与执法人员和犯罪实验室分析师的事先客户访谈，该团队已经收到了行政执法人员和禁毒官员的积极反馈和兴奋。该团队正在验证其产品的价值主张：与竞争技术相比，易于使用，快速，准确，明确，安全和廉价。 在该项目结束时，该小组预计将解决与执法领域药物测试相关的一系列难题，提高法律的过程的效率和有效性。

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.