Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP) is a severe autoimmune disease where your body attacks its own blood platelets. If it goes untreated, it causes severe bruising, internal bleeding, and in the worst cases, life threatening haemorrhage.
The medical reality of ITP is terrifying, but the diagnostic process is arguably worse. Currently, there is no direct test for it in standard medical practice. Instead, doctors run 15 to 20 different blood tests to rule out every other possible cause under the sun. Only after all of them come back negative is a patient finally told that they have ITP.
Because of this exhausting process of elimination, the average wait for a diagnosis is seven to eight years. Patients spend almost a decade suffering, being dismissed by specialists, and watching their condition worsen while medical teams run test after test. The financial burden of this journey is staggering, often climbing upwards of 15 lakhs for the endless panels, specialist visits, and hospital procedures. This is a massive systemic failure.
I know this broken system intimately because I was diagnosed with ITP myself. My diagnosis did not come quickly. It came after endless tests, massive uncertainty, and a very long period of being told absolutely nothing definitive while my body was clearly failing.
That personal experience is the entire reason this project exists. I eventually founded the Autoimmune Support Club, which has grown into a community of over 500 people living with autoimmune conditions. Through conducting more than 300 patient interviews, I heard versions of my own story repeated endlessly. I heard about the long delays, the frequent misdiagnoses, the medical gaslighting, and the years lost to a diagnostic process that simply should not take that long.
So many people are confused by debilitating symptoms yet receive no answer from the medical system. Exhausted by the process, they simply stop seeking help. But studies show that if autoimmune diseases are caught early, they have a significantly higher chance of not turning into chronic, long term conditions. Early detection means they can go into remission through simpler treatments that are far less harsh on the body.
At Distorcate, our core philosophy is moonshot design. We take impossible, heavily guarded, complex problems and build tangible physical proofs of concept to force a better future to arrive faster. I realized I could apply this exact philosophy to the medical system.
I set out to design a rapid diagnostic test that works as simply as a pregnancy test. Two strips. One answer. Done.
The resulting prototype is a lateral flow assay that detects the specific immune markers proving the body is attacking its own blood platelets. Instead of ruling twenty other diseases out, this test simply rules ITP in.
To keep things in plain English: you simply place a single drop of blood onto the test. Within 5 to 15 minutes, if the specific ITP biomarkers are present, the strips change color. It really is that straightforward.
The test relies on two distinct strips: one designed for autoantibody detection, and the other for T-cell detection. You might wonder why we didn't just combine them into a single strip. The answer comes down to real world durability. Combining these sensitive reactive agents would significantly reduce the shelf life of the test.
This prototype was engineered to survive tough conditions. It is meant to endure long travel routes into deep rural and remote areas without losing its medical accuracy. By keeping the strips separate, we maintain a highly durable, sustainable, and reliable diagnostic tool that does not require heavy medical equipment or strict climate control.
The difference in impact is night and day. The result time drops from eight years down to a few minutes. Most importantly, the target cost drops from roughly 15 lakhs for the multi year gauntlet of tests to a fraction of that amount: roughly 200 rupees for a simple, accessible kit.
This is not a cure for the disease, but it fundamentally changes the timeline. A fast, affordable, accessible diagnostic that can tell a doctor and a patient "yes, this is ITP" within minutes changes lives. It stops the medical gaslighting dead in its tracks.
This project is the perfect example of why we build what we build at Distorcate. If you wait for large institutions to fix their own highly profitable, slow moving systems, you will be waiting decades. By designing and prototyping the impossible from scratch, we prove that a better, cheaper, and faster alternative is not just a sci-fi dream. It is physically possible right now.
A provisional patent for this rapid diagnostic test was filed in April 2026. The project is currently a work in progress, and I am openly looking for collaborations to bring this to the hands of patients who need it.
Author: Angel P, founder Autoimmune Support Club (AISC) and Distorcate.
Personal Website: linkedinlunatic.xyz
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