Stamping: A low-cost manufacturing method to deposit assays

Treatable diseases often go undetected in developing countries due to low doctor-to-patient ratios and inaccessibility of health care facilities. While many treatable diseases can be screened via urinalysis, commonly used urine test strips are generally distributed through a formal healthcare system, which has limited access to rural communities. To tailor urinalysis devices to developing countries, simple and small-scale ink deposition methods, such as stamping, are being explored to design point-of-care screening test strips. Such test strips combat inaccessibility through the engagement of community health workers, who serve as a liaison between the formal health care network and rural communities. This work investigates the properties of several off-the-shelf stamps and papers in order to design a platform stamping technology that requires low startup capital. The findings validate a mechanism for stamping assays that can be customized to screen for different conditions such as diabetes, urinary tract infections, water purity, and methanol levels in alcohol, among others. Ultimately, this stamping method has wide scope for humanitarian engineering applications in the fields of health care and environmental safety.