No Needles, No Clinics: Hemolink Draws Blood At Home And Without Pain

Published 10 years ago

Drawing blood has two major downsides: blood and needles. And guess what: HemoLink is a device that’s going to remove the needles from the equation and make blood drawing mostly painless. Developed by Tasso Inc., the device relies on microfluid properties to draw blood from the skin. The plan is for the device to be easy to make, requiring as few as six injection-molded parts. Once in place on the arm, it would take around two minutes to extract 0.15 of a cubic centimeter of blood, enough to test cholesterol, infection, cancer cells and blood sugar. The device could then then be mailed to hospital. Of course, the developers know that blood doesn’t stay stable for that long a time, and the new DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) grant is to be used to ensure that the blood sample will remain viable for a week at 140 degree Fahrenheit/60 Celsius, which will help do away with expensive cold delivery.

Or, you know, enable delivery by post.

Tasso Inc. is a 2010 Wisconsin start up that began with a coffee shop conversation. As Ben Casavant, vice president and co-founder told University of Wisconsin-Madison News: “In 2010, Erwin [Berthier, currently head of R&D] and I were in a coffee shop, and we thought, ‘Let’s start a company — but about what?’ We wanted to use all the cool stuff we had learned to help people, to make products that are useful.” And HemoLink will help people who have to make infrequent blood tests, removing such middle men as needles and hospital visits – as well as the troubles associated with booking time, finding a parking space, waiting for an appointment, and so on. It is expected that HemoLink will be released into the market in late 2016.

Truly this in an invention that will make finger tips around the world rejoice.

More info: tassoinc.com (h/t: distractify, news.wisc.edu)