A smartphone-integrated portable rotating platform for estimation of concentration level of plasma-creatinine using whole human blood

The measurement of creatinine concentration is performed to monitor the renal health. The devices available in modern clinical laboratories for measuring creatinine concentration are accurate and provide results rapidly but may be prohibitively expensive for resource-poor settings. Therefore, developing an inexpensive yet accurate device for measuring creatinine concentration is needed. Consequently, we developed a simple, affordable, and portable spinning disc for measuring plasma-creatinine concentration with 10 mu L of whole human blood.5 mu L of the alkaline picrate solution is loaded into the device and rotated at 1000 rpm to transport this solution to the periphery of the microchannel. Further, 10 mu L whole blood is loaded in the same channel and spun at 1300 rpm for 10 min. The creatinine in plasma reacts with alkaline picrate (Jaffe reaction), and the color of the mixture changes to yellow-orange color. The resulting color is captured with a smartphone, and creatinine concentration is estimated using an in-house developed app (CREA-SESE).The value of creatinine measured with the present device and the gold standard device are highly correlated (R2 = 0.998). The bias and standard deviation of the difference between the two measurements are 0.134 mg/dL and 0.143 mg/dL. This study demonstrates the feasibility of a simple, inexpensive, and portable rotating device for measuring creatinine concentration using 10 mu L of whole human blood, which can easily be deployed to the underserved population in resource-constrained settings to monitor renal diseases.

Automated summary

A simple, affordable, and portable spinning disc has been developed for measuring creatinine concentration. The device shows high correlation with the gold standard device and can be used in resource-constrained settings to monitor renal diseases.