Malaria kills half a million people each year, mostly children in tropical Africa. The price tag for eradicating the disease is estimated at more than $100 billion over 15 years. To do it, you’d need bed nets for everyone, tens of thousands of crates of antimalaria drugs, and millions of gallons of insecticides. But it would take more than stuff. You’d need things the poorest countries in the world don’t have, like strong governments, purchasing power, and functioning public health systems. So malaria keeps killing.

But what if, instead, you needed only a bucket full of mosquitoes?

More than half a million people lose their lives to malaria each year and in 2013 alone, West Africa suffered nearly 198 million cases of the disease, according to the World Health Organization. One of the main problems with malaria is its long delays in diagnosis through conventional blood tests. 

With regular blood sampling methods using laboratory microscopes, doctors mostly rely on the accuracy of the human eye to detect infectious diseases such as malaria and hepatitis B. But these are fallible.

Now, a medical breakthrough means doctors will be able to use computing powers to instantly detect and reduce the prevalence of blood-borne diseases.