One of the biggest challenges in fighting tuberculosis is simply getting patients to take their medicine.

MIT students have come up with a possible solution: A new testing and reporting system that is easy for patients to use and offers economic incentives such as free cell phone minutes.

… The team’s novel test strip takes advantage of new technology known as paper microfluidics. The strip is embedded with chemicals that react with metabolites present in the urine of patients who have taken TB medicine. When the chemical reaction occurs, the strip changes color, revealing a number.

Patients are given a device that dispenses one strip every 24 hours, and after they successfully take the test, they have about two hours to text the number on the strip to a central database that records that they have taken the drug.