While a graduate student at Caltech, Frederick Balagaddé (now a research scientist in the Engineering Technologies Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) invented the micro-chemostat. This novel device is a computer-controlled miniaturized fluidic system designed to mimic a cell culture environment. Its components include human hair-sized valves, pumps, mixers, and injectors. Balagaddé describes it as a “wet lab on a chip”, which he presented at a TED Talk while discussing its potential revolutionary implications in health care.

Balagaddé begins his talk with his view of an irony in public health: the poorest countries carry the largest disease burden. Not surprisingly, Third-world countries have the highest prevalence of disease while experiencing a shortage in health care resources. Fortunately, Western countries have implemented programs to provide free drugs to these needy nations, resulting in millions of saved lives. Balagaddé adds, however, that without adequate diagnostic tools, these same drugs may eventually breed resistance and exacerbate the problem.

Balagaddé plans to use his micro-chemostat to build an HIV diagnostic kit. According to initial estimates, one miniaturized low-cost micro-chemostat the size of an iPhone could diagnose 100 patients and measure 100 viral load levels in each patient. The testing would complete in a mere 4 hours (50 times faster than current standards) at a cost 5-500 times cheaper than done conventional methods. While this technology could have marked impact on health care in Third-world countries, it also has positive implications of what can be done to improve diagnostics on local soil.