(Fox News) Engineers at Columbia University have invented a smartphone accessory that can detect three markers for sexually transmitted diseases with a finger-prick. Compared to traditional laboratory tests administered in the United States and around the world, which can take days to deliver results, the dongle can tell if a person has either syphilis or HIV in only 15 minutes.
Researchers have already tested the contraption in Rwanda, where mother-to-child STD transmission is high, and they say it has the potential to facilitate diagnoses for STDS in other disease-zone areas of the world.
Inventors of the technology also say that it has the potential to one day transform these diagnostic tests in developed countries like the United States.
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