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tru(Hb)lood

Filter Paper Hemoglobinometer

 

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Membership level
2010-2011 Team
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Team Name
tru(Hb)lood
Project Title
Filter Paper Hemoglobinometer
Design Challenge
Team tru(Hb)lood seeks to create a portable, inexpensive hemoglobinometer for point-of-care diagnosis of anemia in low-resource settings. The current standard of diagnosis in the developing world is restrictive in its cost per use. Filter paper offers an affordable and effective alternative to chemically treated plastic cuvettes used by the present diagnostic standard.
Design Summary
Anemia is a condition of deficiency of hemoglobin or red blood cells, hindering the ability of blood to get adequate amounts of oxygen to the body. A major global health problem that affects 1.62 billion people, anemia afflicts two-thirds of pre-school age children and half of women in WHO regions of Africa and Southeast Asia. Anemia contributes to a 72% increase in perinatal mortality and 35% increase in maternal mortality in developing countries. Additionally, anemia may lead to physical and mental developmental problems in early childhood and decreased fitness and aerobic capacity in adults due to decreased system-wide oxygen transport. As a consequence, developing countries in Africa and Southeast Asia are burdened with associated healthcare costs, reduction in adult productivity, and decreased learning by children. Accurate hemoglobin concentration assessment is essential in diagnosis of anemia. Once hemoglobin concentration is assessed, health providers can determine necessary interventions, such as nutrient supplementation, diet counseling, or blood transfusion. In a comprehensive assessment of six hemoglobin concentration tests in Malawi, HemoCue was recommended as the standard-of-care in all Malawian district hospitals. However, HemoCue use is restricted by the high cost ($0.75) of each single-use, plastic cuvette. The cost factor prevents the wide-spread implementation of HemoCue as an easy-to-use hemoglobin concentration test at the community level, especially in low-resource rural areas. Thus, enhancing the accessibility of a cost-effective, low biohazard risk, highly accurate hemoglobin determination method is of particular importance to developing countries in WHO regions of Africa and Southeast Asia. Team tru(Hb)lood aims to develop an alternative to HemoCue that can effectively operate in low-resource settings. The device will achieve the following: 1. Substitute filter paper for the costly plastic cuvettes required by the HemoCue, reducing total costs 20-fold. 2. Accuracy at least on par with that of HemoCue, to within R2 > .980. 3. Deliver consistent volumes of blood to the filter paper cuvette, or removes dependence on volume of sample. 4. Deliver accurate results (R2 > .980) up to 30 minutes after collection of sample, despite drying of blood. 5. Be usable and acceptable to the target population in WHO regions of Africa and Southest Asia
Sponsors
Beyond Traditional Borders, through a grant from Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Hunter Armistead
Award(s)
2010 Rice Engineering Elevator Pitch Competition - Social Ventures Winner; 2011 NCIIA BMEstart Biomedical Innovation - 2nd Place
Department(s)
  • Global Health Technologies
  • Electrical and Computer Engineering
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Faculty Advisor 1 - Name
Maria Oden
 

Team Members

Contact us

Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen
Rice University

6100 Main Street MS 390 | Houston, Texas | 77005

Phone: 713.348.OEDK

Email: oedk@rice.edu

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