A device capable of conveniently detecting pathogens in healthcare, food production and agricultural environments has been developed by a team of researchers from Purdue University.

The new system, dubbed IsoHeat, has been developed to conduct molecular assays across a range of fields.

Source: IEEE Sensors Journal (2025). DOI: 10.1109/jsen.2025.3588790

"This project was mainly about hardware, fabricating the water bath system to process our biological samples," the researchers explained.

According to the developers, the device performs an assay called loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), which was invented 25 years ago. The LAMP assay detects microbes by amplifying target nucleic acids. The team explained that LAMP's chemical reaction occurs at a single, constant temperature to detect any pathogen or nucleic acid targets — for instance, antimicrobial resistance.

The team designed the system so that it is portable, has uniform heat distribution throughout the water while heating and enables the user to spot changes with the human eye.

The IsoHeat device was tested against a piece of equipment for heating LAMP assays in the field with the IsoHeat reaching the target temperature of 149° F in just 12 minutes. Meanwhile, the precision cooker they tested IsoHeat against needed roughly 36 minutes to reach the same temperature, the team determined.

IsoHeat, which was designed to be operated by nonspecialists in the field or in low-resource settings, consists primarily of an electrical system that heats and maintains water at the desired temperature, the hardware and a power supply unit. Additional features of the device include a sealed container to help maintain uniform heating, a hanging sample holder and touchscreen controls.

"We can prepare biological samples and then use our system to process those samples and get our output anywhere," the team concluded.

The device is detailed in the article, “Design and Development of a Field-Deployable Water Bath for Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Assay,” which appears in the IEEE Sensors Journal.