Development of Rapid Techniques for Healthcare and Environment Monitoring

Abstract

The development of rapid detection techniques to be applied at the point of use, has been gaining significant attention in the recent years. Rapid techniques are important and preferable methods in healthcare and environment sector due to the advantages they offer such as low-cost and reduced requirement of resources, both in terms of material and personnel. They are of utmost importance particularly in rural settings, where the facilities are inadequate. The main focus of the present thesis is to develop and assess the applicability, efficacy and advantages of such rapid techniques for healthcare and environment monitoring. Two problems have been considered to address the requirement for rapid techniques, one from healthcare monitoring sector (cardiac marker detection) and another one from environmental sector (water-borne pathogen detection). The first problem involves the development of rapid microfluidic based methods for the detection of cardiac markers (myoglobin and troponin), in order to predict the on-set of myocardial infarction. The second problem involves the development of a field test kit for the rapid detection of total coliform and Escherichia coli (E.coli) in potable water in order to address the needs of environmental monitoring. The rapid detection techniques presented in this thesis are simple, efficient, easy to use, inexpensive, reliable and have a great potential to be applied at the point of use.