Lyme Alert

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Lyme Alert

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Project Summary:

Vector borne diseases are a growing threat worldwide. In the US, Lyme disease is the fastest growing vector born disease with almost 500,000 cases diagnosed last year contributing to an economic burden of over $1.3 billion. The CDC estimates the actual number of cases is actually 3x higher. Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases affect animals as well including dogs, horses and livestock. Ticks are spreading thanks to climate change and access to testing can be expensive, expensive and unequal. 

We are creating the first truly at-home tick testing kit for Lyme disease. Our goal is to speed the time to diagnosis, improve access to testing, and aid in global disease surveillance. We plan to start with Lyme disease as our target disease, but our technology can ultimately be utilized for other vector borne diseases as well aiding in the tracking these diseases worldwide and predicting future spread. 

Our test is simple, easy to use and shelf stable. If a tick is found, simply put it in our tick crusher/test tube, add our patent pending solution and watch for a color change. If the solution changes color, the tick carries Lyme disease and you will be prompted to seek medical attention. If it does not change color, you save the time, cost and difficulty of seeking medical treatment and avoid the use of unnecessary antibiotics. This also helps in the fight against antibiotic resistance. 

Our test pairs with an app. If the color change is not strong, the built in wavelength reader on our app will definitively read your test as positive or negative. Data with geolocation can be shared with departments of health and epidemiologists to help map the rate of positive results. Our built in AI model will also train on the collected data to help model risk and likelihood of disease spread. In this way, we hope to provide public health education and awareness by alerting users when they are entering an area with a high rate of disease and advise them on precautions to take. 

Improving access to testing and speeding up time to diagnosis will reduce the effects of chronic Lyme disease which can have severe, lifetime consequences. We are on a mission to make medical testing affordable and accessible. We hope you will join our mission. 

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