We carried out human practices from the perspectives of the public, doctors and researchers, and get different feedback to promote our projects further.
Interview with the public
The team members conducted a social survey. We found that many people are too busy to go to the hospital for regular medical examinations. People pay less attention to the health of the kidneys. We want to change this situation by using our portable urine testing equipment. According to the practical data, we have found that more than 80% of respondents are willing to use our products. Considering about the binding time of antigen and antibody and the corresponding time of liquid crystal, the acceptable waiting time for respondents is about 40 minutes. We will shorten the waiting time under the condition of ensuring the accuracy of measurement in the subsequent experiments.
This interview and sample survey enriched our project background data. We analyzed and processed the data obtained from the survey and found that our project does have certain market demand. This also laid the foundation for our subsequent optimization of experimental conditions.
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Fig.1 interview with the public |
Interviews with doctors
In August 2018, the team members went to Linyi City People's Hospital of Shandong Province to interview Dr. Liu Haijun, a specialist in nephrology. We knew that early diagnosis and treatment are extremely important in delaying the development of kidney disease. Only when the patient has obvious symptoms will he go to the hospital for an examination. But they may already have entered the dominant diabetic nephropathy (overtDN).
Blood test is the most common diagnosis method of the hospital currently. It takes ¥48 to test the blood β2-microglobulin. However, Dr.Liu said that if a portable urine test method can be developed, it can not only alleviate the pain of blood drawing, but also greatly improve the awareness of diabetes patients and the rate of early visits.
In this interview we exchanged ideas with doctors, and we have learned that from a clinical perspective, our project is more suitable for use at home. It can greatly arouse the awareness of early patients, which can indirectly improve the diagnosis rate and provide the best time for treatment.
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Fig.2 Interviews with doctors |
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Interview with the researches in the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics(DICP)
In order to better understand the current situation of urine testing, the team members came to the Research Group of Biomolecular Efficient Separation and Characterization of Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in October 2018. We exchanged ideas with researcher Yuan Huiming. Researcher Yuan said that the main problem in urine testing is to eliminate interference from other proteins in the urine. The nanobody of β2-microglobulin we selected is more specific and can solve this problem well. On the other hand, our liquid crystal detection method has extremely high sensitivity and has great advantages for the detection of trace proteins in urine.
This exchange allowed us to see the achievability and practical application of our project from the aspect of technical application. It also let us have confidence in our projects.
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Fig.3 Interview with the researches |
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