Chipping in $3M to Accessible Healthcare

??$3 Million for a chip? Well, it’s not just any chip. ??

That’s how much Sudip Shekhar , an associate professor at the The University of British Columbia recently won for the further development of his team’s lab-on-a-chip. The award that Sudip won wasn’t just any grant, though - it was the Schmidt Science Polymaths Award - an award that has never before been won by a Canadian.

Sudip, who is a previous 英特尔 chip designer who has previously helped design computer chips used all over the world, got his start in the biomedical chip design world alongside engineering professor Lukas Chrostowski and biomedical devices researcher Karen Cheung when COVID-19 first hit.

According to Sudip, once the team got together, they realized that “what would really impact the world isn’t another large, expensive device but a smaller, very inexpensive one – something that people can use readily in their own homes.”

While the device that the team made has successfully detected SARS-CoV-2 in a sample, this goes beyond testing for COVID-19 at home - the pleasantly deep-reaching nasopharyngeal test kits already have that covered. What Sudip and Lukas are bringing to life through Dream Photonics Inc. is poised to make healthcare more accessible to underserved communities.

Instead of waiting to get your blood and urine sent off a physician’s scheduled visit in a small town when physicians are in short supply, people in underserved communities may gain access to rapid diagnostics by Sudip’s Bluetooth-enabled device. This means information with more speed so that doctors can help patients with more speed - and perhaps, earlier on in the course of their illness.

Between regulatory hurdles, demonstrating the device’s effectiveness for different indications, and marketing the device, there is plenty to be done before this device can help the patients who need help the most. As such, despite his recent win, Sudip remains humble in the fact that he knows he and his team can’t bring this device to market alone - and as such has put out a call for interested partners to reach out