Cornell FeverPhone

In this work we will develop and field validate “FeverPhone” technology for point-of-care differential diagnosis of six common causes of acute febrile illness (namely: Dengue, Malaria, Chikungunya, Leptospirosis, Typhoid fever, and Chagas). The “FeverPhone” system builds on our team’s extensive background on the development of smartphone based diagnostics, infectious disease, and global health. The technical effort of this program comprises of the development of: a specialized 6-plexed colorimetric IgM/IgG assay cartridge that exploits our previous work on color discrimination assays on mobile devices, associated iPad based hardware that allows rapid interpretation of the cartridge results on a platform already used by our field technicians, and software that will combine differential molecular diagnosis with a confirmatory symptomatic interface used by the operator. The final system will enable actionable diagnosis in around 15 minutes. In parallel with technical development, we will perform a staged field validation study at our existing infectious diseases monitoring site in Ecuador. 

Relevant Publications: 

Kim J, Cao XE, Finkelstein JL, Cárdenas WB, Erickson D, Mehta S. A two-colour multiplexed lateral flow immunoassay system to differentially detect human malaria species on a single test line. Malar J. 2019 Sep 18;18(1):313. doi: 10.1186/s12936-019-2957-x. PubMed PMID: 31533756.

Wang R, Ongagna-Yhombi SY, Lu Z, Centeno-Tablante E, Colt S, Cao X, Ren Y, Cárdenas WB, Mehta S, Erickson D. Rapid Diagnostic Platform for Colorimetric Differential Detection of Dengue and Chikungunya Viral Infections. Anal Chem. 2019 Apr 16;91(8):5415-5423. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.9b00704. Epub 2019 Mar 29. PubMed PMID: 30896928.

Lu Z, O'Dell D, Srinivasan B, Rey E, Wang R, Vemulapati S, Mehta S*, Erickson D*. Rapid diagnostic testing platform for iron and vitamin A deficiency. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Dec 19;114(51):13513-13518. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1711464114. PubMed PMID: 29203653; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5754775. *joint corresponding authors

Rey EG, O'Dell D, Mehta S*, Erickson D*. Mitigating the Hook Effect in Lateral Flow Sandwich Immunoassays Using Real-Time Reaction Kinetics. Anal Chem. 2017 Apr 13. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.7b00638. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 28388030. *joint corresponding authors

Lee S, Mehta S*, Erickson D*. Two-Color Lateral Flow Assay for Multiplex Detection of Causative Agents Behind Acute Febrile Illnesses. Anal Chem. 2016 Sep 6;88(17):8359-63. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.6b01828. Epub 2016 Aug 8. PubMed PMID: 27490379. *joint corresponding authors

Funding Support: