One of the basic diagnostic tests for detecting diseases is a blood test. However so far to get a blood test done you needed to go to a laboratory that was equipped to conduct the test and give you results. In remote regions and third world countries doctors often have no lab to refer the patients to. They have to make do with guess work based in the symptoms.

The scientists as the Michigan Technological University have now come up with a solution to overcome this problem. It is called the lab on a chip and consists of a portable credit card sized chip that can run diagnostics on anything from HIV to diabetes. So far these chips were only able to handle a single type of test as they were manually designed.

However Shiyan Hu, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Technological University, is working on a new kind of chip. This lab on a chip is being designed with the aid of a computer and will be able to run dozens of blood tests. What’s more all it will need to conduct these tests is a single drop of blood. The results of this science project will have great application in the field of health care worldwide.