Health Diagnostics

Being pioneered at McMaster University with international collaborators, a simple sputum test will detect infectious and allergic bronchitis in adults and children, reducing mis-diagnosis in developing countries and saving resources: time, steroids, antibiotics. A simple point of care paper-based diagnostic test in sputum will detect infective and allergic bronchitis in adults and children. This will help guide judicious use of currently available medications (steroids and antibiotics) to treat these disease"

Respiratory diseases are a major problem. Diagnosing and treating respiratory diseases, especially in lower income countries, is difficult. Often doctors just give trials of therapy hoping something will work. We have been developing a test to diagnose respiratory diseases using urine samples.

Myocardial infarction is difficult to detect early. Due to delayed and uncertain diagnosis, physicians are unable to take treatment decisions during the 'golden hour', i.e. before commencement of necrosis. These delays cause incapacitation and death of the patient. We propose to build a smart instrument that will rapidly diagnose myocardial Infarction. We will employ a microcantilever-based bio-sensing system, to detect early cardiac markers (eg. myoglobin) that are released in the blood after an MI event.

Large numbers of women living in rural and remote areas of developing countries lose their lives during pregnancy and child birth due to unavailability of regular antenatal care. This study will develop wristbands to monitor blood pressure, hemoglobin and blood sugar of mothers, and send the information via mobile networks for better monitoring.

By 2030, chronic and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are predicted to be biggest health threat to sub-Saharan Africa. These innovators aim to build sustainable capacity to screen and treat NCDs using approaches, systems and technologies that have been successfully employed in HIV response. This project aims to establish an integrated and scalable program for treating NCDs including cervical cancer, hypertension and diabetes.

Developing an innovative strategy for hypertension detection, treatment and control in two middle income countries (Hypertension Outcomes Prevention and Evaluation: HOPE-4)

Hypertension is a largely unrecognized epidemic in Africa. The number of hypertensive patients in 2008 and 2025 is estimated at 74.7 and 125.5 million, respectively - a 68% increase. Because the majority of Africa is affected by poor health infrastructure and low numbers of health workers, attempts to prevent and treat hypertension are nearly non-existent.

DREAM-GLOBAL: Diagnosing hypeRtension - Engaging Action and Management in Getting LOwer Bp in Aboriginal and LMIC - A Research Proposal

Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD) are the number one cause of death in the world, with over 80% of all deaths taking place in low- and middle-income countries. While early detection of CVDs is possible through affordable tools such as lab tests, its efficacy is limited because the patient never checks his heart until CVD symptoms appear in late stages. This innovation aims to empower every individual through an innovative CVD detection tool running on her/his smartphone: just take a photo of your eye and your vascular health will be automatically assessed.

The device is to be used as a replacement of the expensive echocardiography to pre-diagnose common heart diseases in Vietnam.