Aid workers in Ebola-stricken regions could soon be using a new tool that allows aid workers to diagnose patients in under 30 minutes even when they don’t have symptoms — a tool that happens to be a 17-year old high school junior’s winning science project.
Olivia Hallisey of Greenwich, Connecticut won top prize for her Ebola test kit in the fifth annual Google Science Fair, which honored nine students aged 13 to 18 from all over the world last week.
Currently available diagnosis tools take up to 12 hours to produce results and need to be kept cold so the testing reagents remain stable — a near impossibility in regions without reliable electricity. Hallisey’s Ebola Assay Card builds on current stabilizing techniques for vaccines and antibiotics that use a silk protein, Bombyx mori silk fibroin, to hold Ebola antibodies and reagents without refrigeration.
While scientists are making great strides toward creating a vaccine, early detection is vital to a patient’s survival. Early symptoms of an Ebola infection, such as fever, aren’t specific to the virus and are also common in other illnesses including malaria and typhoid fever thus making it hard to diagnose, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
A patient is more likely to survive because an early diagnosis can prevent dehydration, by instructing patients to drink fluids. Delayed diagnosis and treatment is at the heart of the West African Ebola epidemic that began in 2014 and killed nearly three-quarters of the people who contracted the virus.
Hallisey capitalized on those facts and won a $50,000 education scholarship. “I knew I wanted a simple and stable solution to a complex problem like infectious diseases,” Hallisey told CNBC. “So I started looking into ways on how to limit the spread of this deadly disease.”
There were 20 finalists and eight winners, representing the U.S., India, France, the UK, and Singapore. Winning projects yielded impressive solutions to complex problems, including Alzheimer’s diagnosis, vaccine transport and using solar-powered silver to filter contaminated water.
Hallisey, who wants to follow in her physician grandfather’s footsteps, was one of three female finalists in the 16 to 18 age group, and had sage advice for all girls even those that may not think they like science:
“I would just encourage girls just to try it in the beginning, remind them that they don’t have to feel naturally drawn or feel like they have a special talent for math or science, but just really just look at something they are interested in and then think how to improve something or make it more enjoyable or relate it to their interests.”