Mobile phone diagnostic tool to help detect disease

23 August 2016

IMB’s Professor Kirill Alexandrov is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Professor Alexandrov will pursue an innovative global health and development research project to repurposing glucose monitoring technology to develop a cheap, portable biosensor to detect a range of infectious diseases, including Dengue fever and Zika virus.

Infectious diseases cause 16 per cent of deaths worldwide each year, mostly in developing countries, but the majority can only be definitively diagnosed through time-consuming and costly laboratory tests.

Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) is a US$100 million initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which funds individuals worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how we solve persistent global health and development challenges.

Initial grants of US$100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to US$1 million.

Watch the full ABC News story with Professor Alexandrov.

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