Can Google glass test HIV and prostate cancer? #newtechnology

Google Glass taking image of RDT
@ACSNANO

A Google Glass-based platform has been shown to detect human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Since its limited availability to public, Google Glass has been used for variety of applications.

The GoogleGlass is famous for a voice-controllable hands-free computing system that can perform imaging and video-recording tasks. In addition, various wireless technologies including Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are available in it. It can access internet and determine location information via global positioning systems (GPS) and/or triangulation through cellular service provider towers.

Google Glass @ACSNANO

The details of recently demonstrated Google Glass-based rapid diagnostic test (RDT) reader platform has been published in American Chemical Society journal ACSNANO by a group of scientists from University of California, LA, USA. This platform was used in lateral flow immunochromatographic assays that are important in biomedical diagnostic tests.

Without using any external optical hardware, the custom-written Glass application can take images of one or more RDTs labeled with QR codes in the lateral flow assay stripes developed for particular analytes using the built-in camera of the Glass. It then digitally transmits the images to a remote server for processing. The RDTs to be imaged can be either held in the user's hand or laid flat on a surface during imaging process. These digital test images are automatically processed to create a quantitative diagnostic result, which is then returned to the Google Glass user and stored with the RDT image and other related information on a central server providing review of diagnostics results via a world map through geo-tagged data.

This wearable computational platform like Google Glass allows for rapid hands-free imaging and processing of any number of RDTs. Such platforms would be very useful for disease and medical condition testing and monitoring in remote locations like places in Nepal, disaster relief areas, or quarantine zones especially in resource limited settings. Once this new application is fully optimized, it has a reasonably good potential for epidemiology and mobile-health applications. It may also be used in providing real-time spatiotemporal tracking of various diseases and personal medical conditions through a rapid hands-free and high-throughput imaging interface.