Medical diagnostics is used to determine a person’s medical condition by looking closely at their symptoms. Medical diagnostics plays an important part in patient care from the initial screening all the way to the prognosis and eventual cure or treatment of a patient. So, healthcare or medical diagnostics is key to better patient care and improved rates of success. Currently, the technology used for medical diagnostics is expensive, which leaves out many individuals who simply can’t afford to take tests that will be crucial for their successful treatment, while others look towards local NGOs, and welfare institutions for help. Even hospitals feel the weight of sky rocketing costs of medical diagnostics. A new technology promises to provide low cost medical diagnostics to patients and potentially help hospitals save up to $1.3 trillion in patient diagnostic’s costs.

The new technology is a silicone-based, bio-sensor chip for portable use in diagnostics. The key discovery allows scientists to use optical nano structures inside a standard CMOS integrated circuit fabrication. This allows scientists to put all the complexities of medical diagnosis into a small chip. The technology does not make any changes to the CMOS fabrication process, while allowing you to process multiple analytes simultaneously, decreasing processing time and cost while improving productivity.

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Kaushik Sengupta, assistant professor of electrical engineering