The backbone of the modern internet is based on fiber optic cables strung across the globe, but these optical fibers could be used to carry more than just data. Researchers around the world are tantalizingly close to using the same glass fibers found in telecom equipment to house a new generation of chemical sensors. The hunt for the so called “lab-on-a-fiber” has the potential to reduce healthcare costsdramatically and make your next checkup a bit less of a hassle.
Today’s laboratory technologies require rooms full of pricey instruments and temperature controlled reagents — all this just to check your blood sample for cholesterol or evidence of an infection. It’s not feasible to have this kind of facility everywhere, so samples are shipped off and you have to wait days or weeks for results. In some areas of the world, these tests aren’t even available. Shouldn’t there be a way to use all this fabulous modern technology to make everything faster and easier? Well, scientists have been working on that for decades.
The idea of a lab-on-a-fiber is similar to a lab-on-a-chip, which already exists. The main problem with using an integrated electronic chip in human health is that we’re very wet and goopy inside. A lab-on-a-chip is made largely of metal semiconductors that corrode under such conditions, but a glass optical cable doesn’t have that problem. These chips are also too large to be implanted in the body, but fiber optics could be threaded directly into the blood vessels for real time monitoring.
