Researchers at Washington State University have invented a new smartphone-based portable hardware and software platform for detecting 12 common viral and bacterial infections. The work was published in the journal Clinica Chimica Acta.

In a trial of 771 patient samples conducted at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, researchers were able to detect infections including mumps, measles, herpes, and Lyme Disease with 97 to 99.9 percent accuracy. Specifically, the positive percent agreement against standard clinical laboratory tests was 100 percent and the negative percent agreement was higher than 83 percent for all tests but one.

"This smartphone reader has the potential to improve access and speed up healthcare delivery," Lei Li, assistant professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Washington State, said in a statement. "If we find out about infections, we can treat them more quickly, which makes a difference especially in low-resource, remote areas."

The system, which researchers were able to assemble for less than $50, could be used to provide quick, accurate screenings in areas where lab testing is not widely accessible. Unlike most existing smartphone-based infection screeners, the mReader, as the device is called, can analyze 96 samples at a time. It does so by using computer vision to execute microplate spectrophotometry in a much smaller form factor than usual.

Increasing the speed at which viral and bacterial infections can be identified can have a large effect on public health, potentially helping doctors to stop the spread of disease in rural or resource-poor areas, the researchers noted.