Blood analysis chip could aid global health care

-The AIDS Healthcare Foundation in San Francisco runs several dozen HIV tests every week. -The more we can automate the process, the better. -Dale Gluth who has been involved with HIV prevention and testing for nearly two decades would welcome new testing technology. -That technology would help us in terms of volume. It would probably eliminate some human error concerns. -That's what a group of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are working on with their new blood analysis chip. With one drop of blood, it can detect HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and even some cancers all at the same time and even faster than ever before. -And we can detect these whole array of diseases within 10 minutes. It's a very fast process and it's very sensitive. -The drop of blood then separates and the plasma reacts with the biomarkers from specific diseases. If a disease is present, a signal will light up. -It's lightweight. It'll be easy to make since it's just plastic and then so simple to ship to people around the world. -In the developing countries, there's no centralized lab. There's very limited equipment and-- In the remote areas, people just don't have access to that. -Having something like this would be great in terms of access and immediate diagnosis. -Researchers are already working on the next generation of the chip where you could read the results with a cellphone and are hoping to get FDA approval in the next two years. For CBS news, I'm Kara Tsuboi, cnet.com in San Francisco.