Integrated Human Practices

Introduction

Our project RAPID is aiming at solving a real life problem using the method of synthetic biology. Thus, human practice has always been a way for us to evaluate our project and understand what is really need to solve the problem. Human practice of our project includes many dimensions and has led our project to the current direction.

Potential users

When we are brainstorming the project, we found it really important to understand the needs of our users, thus we did a survey not only in Hong Kong, but also mainland and Singapore (Thanks so much to NUS team for helping us distributing the survey).

Questionnaires across countries

We received a total of 333 questionnaires from Hong Kong, mainland China and Singapore. Of which, 192 respondents were from Hong Kong, 107 respondents were from mainland China, and with the help of National University of Singapore, we have received 34 respondents from Singapore.

One of the questions was “Can you differentiate the symptoms between cold and flu?”

Most of the respondents answered “No” and the percentage can be as high as 82%.

Another question was “If there is a device that can help you and your family conveniently and accurately detect flu by collecting nasal fluid, would you like you to buy it?”

The largest fraction of the respondents answered “Yes” and the respondents in Hong Kong are the most interested in the product (87%).

The results has shown that our project addresses a healthcare need and there is a potential demand for our product.

7 August 2018 Interview with Dr. Chan Chi Yin

Dr. Chi Yin Natural, Chan graduated from CUHK’s medical school in 1994 and has been a physician with general out-patient clinics experience for 20 years. He now owns a community clinic in Sha Tin, Hong Kong. In Dr. Chan’s clinic, there are also two commercial point-of-care quick tests for influenza that he sometimes would perform for his patients.

We pitched our project idea to him and asked him for feedback and comments. As our potential user, Dr. Chan expressed concerns about the imaging system on phone because that everyone’s phone has different settings for colour display. Therefore, our team has developed a calibration system with the help of ASTRI (The Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute). Since there are already existing quick tests in the market, to increase the competitiveness of our project, it is important to lower the cost, but at the same time, the test should be as good as the current quick tests. Lowering the cost is beneficial to healthcare providers as well as patients, as patients may be hinder from the extra incurred cost and hence choose not to take these quick tests and miss the golden chance for early detection and treatment.

24 August 2018 Interview with Prof. Lee Shui-shan

Prof. Shui-shan, Lee is the Deputy Director of Stanley Ho Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases. Prof. Lee received his MD degree from CUHK and later joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong as the Chair Professor in Infectious Disease. He is a scholar in areas of internal medicine, pathology and public health.

As usual, we pitched our project design to him. Prof. Lee likes our project because it is a new way of diagnosing influenza, which is not PCR-based or antigen-based. Before meeting Prof. Lee, we had a lot of thoughts about our project, we hope our device would be available to every household and clinic and therefore, can develop a reporter system online and serve as an epidemiology tool to warn citizens about the seriously affected regions. Prof. Lee gave us advice based on his research experience, he reminded us that the no. of people infected with influenza virus at the same exact moment will not be high, so tracking the real time no. of infected person will not be of great significance. However, he commented that our project has the potential of being a useful self-testing, which the general can have a preliminary diagnosis when they experience flu-like symptoms.

Besides, the goal of our project is do subtyping of influenza, but Prof. Lee reminded us that for a self-testing device, it is more important have good sensitivity, but it need not to be specific, generating a positive or negative result will be more interested to the public. We made adjustments in our project, and we have successfully cloned the universal influenza probe for PB2 as one of our team’s new biobricks, so our probe can pick up influenza of different subtypes simultaneously.

Therefore, after the interview with him, we have a more clear direction, the primary objective is to build a self-testing device at a low cost, so it would be accessible to the majority of HK citizens. Public health surveillance will be the secondary objective of the project and can be further developed.