Infectious Disease

Hilmi Quraishi and team are building a system to enable adherence to TB treatment. The proposed solution is sliced from ZMQ's Fully-Technology Linked Model (F-TLM) for TB treatment and management called the Open and Universal Technology based TB (OUT-TB) Management and Treatment Framework. The framework was developed by ZMQ under its Freedom TB initiative. The proposed solution empowers the patients with active compliance reporting, gamification, and effective self-management of TB treatment using mobile-based tools integrated with miniature DOTS Center Systems and DOTS Provider Toolkit.

Bill Thies and the team of 99DOTS aim to achieve 99% TB drug adherence using a combination of basic mobile phones and augmented blister packaging to provide real-time medication monitoring at drastically reduced cost. The approach is to utilize a custom envelope, or blister card, into which each pack of medication is inserted and sealed by the care provider. When the patient dispenses medication from the blister pack, the pills also break through perforated flaps on the blister card. On the back side of each flap is a hidden number.

Nishant Kumar and team are building a mobile hardware app which can serve an electronic pill box and can be attached to a conventional mobile phone. The hardware attachment has a rectangular sleek design, which can be fixed onto the mobile phone or can be used separately. A mobile application runs on the phone and controls the hardware attachment via Bluetooth. This product also facilitates a novel points-based incentives system to further encourage the patient towards continued adherence. A complementary mobile phone application runs on the handheld devices of the health worker.

Muriel Vray of Institut Pasteur of Dakar in Senegal will evaluate a loop-mediated isothermal amplification assay (LAMP), a simple, robust and inexpensive nucleic acid amplification assay, to quantify/semi-quantify hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA levels in Senegal. In the first step, they will validate the assay in a reference laboratory in Dakar, compared with the reference standard PCR assay. In the second step, they will validate the assay in a decentralized context at a rural health center in Senegal. They will also evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the use of LAMP.

Diawo Diallo of Institut Pasteur de Dakar in Senegal will validate and implement a timely and up-to-date surveillance system of zika virus prevalence in the mosquito population in the Kédougou area using an innovative integrated device developed by Gopaul from Institut Pasteur in Paris. This 3-in-1 device includes a mosquito trap, an analysis station that will carry an antibody-based detection system with an easy to read color change result and a mapping software to create a real-time map of arbovirus infected mosquitoes.

James Platts-Mills of the University of Virginia in the U.S. will quantify the effect of factors, including antibiotic use and hospitalization, in infants on the subsequent incidence and spread of drug-resistant pathogens in developing countries. This will help design more effective strategies for containing it. They will use samples and data taken from birth up to one year of age from a previous longitudinal study, the MAL-ED study, which was performed in eight developing countries. Monthly samples from fifty infants will be analyzed for the emergence of drug-resistant E. coli.

David Wright of Vanderbilt University in the U.S. will develop a diagnostic that combines sample concentration and multiplex detection into one rapid test that can detect the low levels of the malaria parasite in asymptomatic patients. They will develop a vertical flow component to accommodate larger sample volumes, which will increase the sensitivity of the adjacent lateral flow assay. They will mark the position of a fold on the diagnostic for delivering the isolated biomarkers on one side to the lateral flow assay on the other, which will then present the results using colored lines.

Charlie Johnson of the University of Pennsylvania in the U.S. will develop a diagnostic platform that uses magnetic nanopore filters and a simple nucleic-acid detection system in an integrated miniaturized device to diagnose infectious diseases such as HIV from a variety of human samples. The diagnostic will consist of 15nm pores etched onto thin polycarbonate films that can trap individual viruses, label them with magnetic particles, and concentrate them with a magnetic field.

Tyler Radford of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team in the U.S. will develop an analytical tool to derive information relevant for malaria elimination efforts from OpenStreetMap, which is the largest crowd-sourced map of the world. OpenStreetMap contains information uploaded by volunteers and professionals on the location of features such as roads and health facilities. They will build plugins that enable users to analyze the distribution of malaria intervention strategies such as bed nets and health clinics, and identify regions that require more detailed mapping.

Fredrik Westerlund of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden will develop a portable device for low-income settings based on a smartphone to identify antimicrobial resistance genes on bacterial plasmid DNA, which is a major source of antibiotic resistance. Plasmids are small pieces of circular DNA that are readily transferred between different bacteria. Current methods for characterizing them are costly and require sophisticated equipment.