Michigan Tech Associate Professor Laura Brown (co-PI) and Robert Minerick (PI) of Microdevice Engineering, Inc. were granted a new award funded by the National Science Foundation regarding the broader impact/commercial potential of development of a portable, low cost blood typing and anemia screening device for use in blood donation centers, hospitals, humanitarian efforts and the military.
This device provides the ability to pre-screen donors by blood type and selectively direct the donation process (i.e. plasma, red cells) to reduce blood product waste and better match supply with hospital demand. This portable technology could also be translated to remote geographical locations for disaster relief applications.
The proposed project will advance knowledge across multiple fields including: microfluidics and the use of electric fields to characterize cells to identify the molecular expression on blood cells responsible for ABO-Rh blood type and rapidly measure cell concentration. This project includes the development of software for real time tracking of cell population motion and adapts advanced pattern recognition tools like machine learning and statistical analysis for identification of features and prediction of blood types.