After reading “Handheld Puts AIDS Fight in Field,” I thought, “Finally!”

I know I’m not a bioengineer or anything, but it seems to me if the world has been using portable pregnancy tests for thirty years, I expected portable disease detectors to appear sooner or later.

Many scientists have been working to make diagnostic technology cheaper and more portable. The diagnostic process can take days or weeks, first getting a bodily fluid sample, then shipping it off, have it examined in a lab, and finally have your results delivered by phone or mail. Imagine how exhausting this process can be in a developing country, such as Africa, where people travel from an obscure place to get tested, and sometimes never know what they’re diagnosed with simply because they can’t be located later. The highlight of the article on HIV diagnosing is that the card can be reprogrammed to detect other diseases and cancers. I think it’s not uncommon for a person to get tested, and never receive their results. The “blissful” ignorance of not knowing if one is sick is not only harmful to one’s self, but to others as well. The sooner someone learns he/she is sick, the sooner we can attempt to cure it, prevent it from spreading, or at least buy some time for a longer life. I’m quite optimistic and looking forward to how this instrument will change diagnostic procedures and people’s personal lives.

An article I found from the University of Houston is more informative than the one from Wired.com:

What I would like to know that the articles from Wired.com and U.H. didn’t address is how accurate the tests are. It only stressed the convenience of the new technology.