Devices & Diagnostics, Diagnostics, Health IT

Wow of the Week: Implantable blood-test-on-a-chip sends continuous readings to a cellphone

The nano movement in medical devices has produced some pretty promising inventions, and here’s another […]

The nano movement in medical devices has produced some pretty promising inventions, and here’s another to add to the list. Scientists in Switzerland have built an implantable blood testing chip that keeps tabs on certain compounds in the blood and relays those continuous measurements to a computer.

Though it’s only a few cubic millimeters in volume, the chip contains five sensors and a radio transmitter. Each sensor is coated with an enzyme that reacts with compounds in the blood like lactate or Adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The researchers have said they’ve already been able to detect five proteins and organic compounds, but could potentially detect just about anything.

A needle is used to insert the chip into the interstitial tissue just under the skin, where it has a life span of about a month and a half. Powered by a generator patch that’s placed on top of the skin, the chip sends the sensor readings to a physician using radiowaves and Bluetooth technology.

Giovanni de Micheli and Sandro Carraro at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, the brains behind the device, said it could have applications in monitoring chemotherapy, cardiac and diabetes patients.

They unveiled the prototype at the Design, Automation & Test in Europe conference in March and hope to a commercial version available within four years.

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