A Lab-On-Card for a point of care infectious disease diagnosis

This paper reports an Electronic System for application in biological analysis, especially in the detection of Infectious Disease. This system consists of a credit card size circuit that we have named “Lab-On-Card” or “LOC”. It is composed of three parts: (1) a tube, as a biological sample holder, containing the lyophilized reagents; (2) a Thermoelectric Module based on Peltier effect as a heating source; (3) and an Embedded System on a Printed Circuit Board containing the control circuit of the system. This low cost system enables the detection of several pathogens and diseases. The operation is based on Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification method (LAMP), a gene amplification method, which amplifies DNA with high specificity and efficiency under isothermal conditions. Because of its rapidity and simplicity, it is a valuable diagnostic tool in the early detection and identification of infectious diseases and has already demonstrated its outstanding capability.