Malaria is pretty easy to detect inside a hospital laboratory, but the disease is prevalent in poor areas of the world where clinical access is often limited. Duke University researchers have now developed a fully automated system that can be used in the field to test for malaria with only a blood prick.
Currently most testing is done using standard microscopy, and the process of staining, preparing, and visualizing the cells can be time consuming. The new Duke technique can potentially screen thousands of cells per minute and maybe screen entire villages in about a day.
