A lab on fiber

Think back to the last time you got a blood test. Maybe you had your cholesterol checked or got screened for infections, heart disease, stroke risk, thyroid troubles, or osteoporosis. Easy, right? A nurse simply drew your blood and shipped the vials to a lab. But behind the scenes, the process gets more complex. Today’s laboratory technologies require rooms full of temperature-controlled chemicals, analytical machines worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and trained technicians to run them. That's why it probably took days, maybe even a week or two, to get your results. And depending on the tests, a panel of them could easily have set you back several hundred dollars. · Such expenses are a major reason that health-care costs are rising around the world. In rural communities or developing countries, the situation may be much worse than inconvenient. Patients may travel hours or days just to reach a clinic and often don't make it back to collect the results. Many of them can't afford tests for such lifethreatening diseases as malaria and tuberculosis.