Integrated Human Practice
Interview and questionnaire of different skateholders
influenzais an infectious disease caused by influenza virus, we usually simply call it "flu". There
is usually an outbreak every year in the world, Hong kong is not excluded:
According to the latest figures (up to 17 August 2017) from the Department of Health, HKSAR,
536 cases of severe illness and 388 deaths were recorded, affecting Hong Kong a lot every year
undoubtedly in terms of public healthcare system, economy. In order to let our design suit the
real needs of potential users, it is necessary to understand their concerns except only focusing
on the construction of biobricks.
There are 4 major potential users: medical expert, chicken farmer, government, general public.
Medical Expert
1. Professor Chan Kay Sheung, Paul
We interviewed Professor Paul Chan at the department of Microbiology, Prince of Wales Hospital. Professor Paul Chan is an Honorary Consultant in Microbiology of the Hong Kong Hospital Authority. He is also a member of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network of World Health Organization.He is an expert of molecular methods for rapid diagnosis and strain characterization (conducted research in?).
The conversation with Prof. Chan was fruitful. He had explained the whole process of influenza detection, from sample collection to standard diagnosis procedures in very detail, which set a clearer direction on what we should focus more. For example, there is a verity of sources of sample can be collected from patient: Nasopharyngeal aspirate is the most sensitive source to be examined, however, assistance of nurse is required, while throat swab is the common method adopted in clinic due to its easier manipulation and collection, but lower amount of virus can be found here, leading to lower accuracy. Thus, He emphasized the importance of the sensitivity: if the product we designed is sensitive enough (sensitivity performance similar to PCR reaction (molecular assay)), the source limitation is no longer an obstacle and it can then be applied in the clinic without the help of profession of collecting human specimens.
Thus, we decided to package our design as “point of care”
, can be applied in both hospital and clinic, especially useful in nightshift and peak season. Besides, as suggested by Prof Chan, distinguishing the subtype of influenza is not very significant in tackling flu
, because currently available medicine can already defeat all types of influenza. Reversely, subtyping is relatively important to be the parameter of deciding the release of chicken to the market. Thus, two directions of detection are proposed: for human, identification of the presence of influenza(Avian?) is enough; as for subtyping, it is more suitable to be applied in chicken detection.
