The Effectiveness of HIV treatment depends upon the concentration of HIV (viral load) in the blood-stream.  The patient is advised to change the drug whenever any change occurs in the viral load. The viral load  monitoring  is so expansive because of resource-poor setting and expansive equipment. The lab of Rustern lsmagilov has designed a cheap Microfluidic Chip. Its capable of monitoring viral load in the blood stream cheaply.

This figure shows slip chip

A standard laboratory tool called PCR is used to measure the concentration of HIV.  The Digital PCR is also in use which is more effective and accurate in counts. Microfluidics is the recent technology for this purpose.  The sample is divided in multitude of tiny wells. Each well contains almost 1 molecule. Molecules are then amplified and then the result would be  either “yes” or “no”.

The microfluidic device shown here

In order to handle the measurement of large dynamic range, as HIV viral load ranges from 50 to a million molecules per ml, divide the sample in to a series of varying sized-well. Then count the molecules at different concentrations.  Now sum the information through all these, it would be more precised than individual information.