A Hong Kong scientist is developing the world's fastest biosensor to diagnose heart attacks in minutes rather than hours.
The potentially life-saving device can confirm a heart attack within half an hour in a laboratory setting.
Conventional means usually take between three and six hours.
Dr Reinhard Renneberg, a chemist at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the co-editor of the international journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, hopes to cut down the time to minutes.
'Those early hours are crucial,' he said. 'We hope to make the sensor reliable, portable and easy to use.' Dr Renneberg and Queen Mary Hospital's biochemist Edward Janus are applying for a research grant to test the device on Hong Kong patients.
Heart disease is the second most fatal illness in Hong Kong after cancer, killing more than 4,500 people each year.