Palm-Sized Uric Acid Test Lab Powered by Smartphone for Proactive Gout Management

A simple and convenient photochemical system based on a smartphone-powered photochemical dongle and disposable photochemical test strips was proposed in this paper. The components of the system were only connected with each other in a simple hot-plug way, but provided a convenient function of biological sample detection. The photochemical dongle working as a highly rigorous reflectance spectral analyzer was used to evaluate the uric acid levels of the fingertip whole blood with the participation of the photochemical test strip for the point of care, which showed good agreement (linear regression coefficient of 0.99338) as compared to the results from the specific and bulky biochemical analyzer in the clinical test. Furthermore, combined with the widespread smartphone and well-developed Internet, the photochemical dongle could provide a flexible and portable platform for the evaluation and treatment of chronic diseases, such as gout, and it is promising to be applied in the remote chronic disease management.