iEat Is a Portable Device for Detecting Life-Threatening Food Allergens

Allergic reactions to certain foods (most commonly peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish, milk, and eggs) are a serious health risk for those who are susceptible to them. Every year roughly 200,000 Americans end up in the emergency room because of food allergies, and about half of those are from anaphylaxis. With costs of life-saving drugs like EpiPens on the rise, prevention of allergic reactions in the first place is more important than ever.

Typically, people with food allergies bear the burden of trying to avoid those ingredients that can harm them. There are some federal regulations in place to make that burden easier to handle, but as the statistics above make clear, accidents still happen frequently — particularly among children. That’s why scientists from Harvard Medical School are developing an inexpensive device called iEAT (integrated exogenous antigen testing) for detecting allergens.

iEAT is small enough to fit in your pocket, only costs about $40 to make, and can detect a host of common allergens in less than 10 minutes. The device uses a disposable sample collector, which is inserted into the small key fob-sized main unit. Once the sample has been analyzed, the results are sent to the user via a smartphone app.

The analysis is sensitive enough to detect allergens in smaller concentrations than what FDA requires. Gluten, for example, can be detected in concentrations 200 times smaller than what the regulations call for. In restaurants, the scientists were able to detect gluten in foods advertised as being “gluten free.” While iEAT isn’t commercially available yet, the prototype sounds very promising and could potentially save thousands of lives a year.

UPDATE: More information can be found in this recent news segment from CBS Boston.