Viral load measurements are an essential tool for the long-term clinical care of hum an
immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive individuals. The gold standards in viral load
instrumentation, however, are still too limited by their size, cost, and sophisticated operation for
these measurements to be ubiquitous in remote settings with poor healthcare infrastructure,
including parts of the world that are disproportionately affected by HIV infection. The challenge
of developing a point-of-care platform capable of making viral load more accessible has been
frequently approached but no solution has yet emerged that meets the practical requirements of
low cost, portability, and ease-of-use. In this paper, we perform reverse-transcription loopmediated
isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) on minimally processed HIV-spiked whole blood
samples with a microfluidic and silicon microchip platform, and perform fluorescence
measurements with a consumer smartphone. Our integrated assay shows amplification from as few
as three viruses in a ~ 60 nL RT-LAMP droplet, corresponding to a whole blood concentration of
670 viruses per µL of whole blood. The technology contains greater power in a digital RT-LAMP
approach that could be scaled up for the determination of viral load from a finger prick of blood in
the clinical care of HIV-positive individuals. We demonstrate that all aspects of this viral load
approach, from a drop of blood to imaging the RT-LAMP reaction, are compatible with lab-on-achip
components and mobile instrumentation.