ABSTRACT
Sensitive and affordable diagnostics even for rare diseases are of
certain importance for public health labs in developing countries
but are often not accessible to those who need them most.
Recent interest highlights innovative technological approaches for
overcoming the problem, but these must be balanced by the
efforts and research needed to ensure effective implementation
in the context of only basic laboratory equipment available in
most countries in the developing world. This article discusses the
use of chip-based hybridization arrays for diagnostic purposes
under basic laboratory conditions. It describes a robust and field-
usable chip array design for detection of human pathogens that
couples conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with a DNA
hybridization array.
