A Point-of-Care Instrument for Rapid Diagnosis of Pneumonia

Bastiaan Hoogendoorn at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom will develop a simple, inexpensive breath-testing device to measure the type and levels of bacteria in the lungs for rapid diagnosis of pneumonia in children in low-resource settings. Rather than condensing the exhaled breath, which can cause variation, the device directly captures respiratory fluid droplets containing non-volatile pathogen markers. These markers can then be identified using low-cost commercially available bioassay kits. They will analyze biomarker levels in the breath of sick and healthy children, and test and refine the design of their prototype.