The Naval Research Laboratory‘s ongoing partnership with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency on programs that aim to predict widespread and regional disease outbreaks has resulted in three diagnostic technologies, GCN reported Tuesday.These technologies were developed out proposals from the 24 Month Challenge project, meeting the requirements for technologies that could detect the causative agents of febrile illnesses and send the data to a cloud database for analysis, the report said.
The prototype biosurveillance analytics technologies are slated for field testing in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia.
NRL has worked with InBIOS International and ChemBio Diagnostics Systems to develop special lateral flow immunoassay strips.
“We . . . challenged these companies to make their new LFIs capable of detecting the causative agents for malaria, dengue fever, melioidosis and the plague using only a blood sample obtained from a finger prick,” said Shawn Mulvaney, NRL principal investigator.
NRL has also collaborated with Fio Corp. to use the camera and smartphone features of the Deki Reader to analyze test results and communicate diagnostic data.
