LANSING, Mich. — A Michigan State University student and a team of researchers have just come up with a way to test for COVID and they've figured out a way to make the process faster and cheaper.
Right now, COVID testing is a multi-step process involving a series of chemical washes but Zach Morehouse and his team have discovered a way to refine things.
“What we did is we used a machine to homogenize or break apart the virus. So through using mechanical forces, we take that same swab that the patient collected and we put that straight into our device,” said Morehouse.
Morehouse says the process he and his team have developed cuts out the steps of chemical washes and enzyme degradation.
And when you remove steps from the process, you basically cut out the middle man, which makes the test cheaper to develop.
So what does all of this mean?
“For us, we saw a need to address finding a need to develop a test and look for this virus that didn’t break the bank. That’s kind of what drove us here was to find a quicker and cheaper way to do COVID testing without sacrificing any of the accuracies,” said Morehouse.
Morehouse says the process his team has come up with makes COVID testing more accessible for places where access is an issue like developing countries and rural areas.
Right now, patients in these places are being sent to larger areas to be tested, which isn’t always an option for some patients.
With this model, two compact machines can be set up on an office desk to complete the testing process.
The results of Morehouse and his team’s research was just published in a scientific journal last month.
He says the next step in the process is to get FDA approval, which could be a lengthy process.
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