You won't need to bleed for your doctor anymore

Oct 24, 2014 13:56 GMT  ·  By

Blood tests are the most popular way of detecting most of a person's anatomic and physiological traits, as well as whether or not they have any sort of health condition. They don't feel that great, though, and they're not perfectly safe either.

Skin is the ultimate insulator against the pathogens floating in the air, or those that would otherwise make it into our organisms through cuts and such.

Nevertheless, medics regularly bypass it by means of needles, and this is something that scientists from the University of Cincinnati and the US Air Force Research Laboratory want to stop.

Well, maybe that's not their grand plan, but their research did, nonetheless, yield a method that could make blood tests unnecessary.

The sweat-analyzing skin patch

A team led by University of Cincinnati Prof. Jason Heikenfeld has created a flexible adhesive patch which can transmit all the medical data a doctor could possibly need in real time.

The patch uses a microfluidic paper-based sampling system to gain information about your body fluids' composition.

That information is processed and gathered by a controller chip, which then uses an electronic circuit to send it to an antenna which, in turn, sends it over the air to a smartphone or any other supported device nearby.

We have a feeling that professional, rugged or otherwise, tablets and smartpads will see a lot more use in hospitals starting in the next few years. The patch only needs to be strapped to your skin like a band-aid by the way.

Now you might be wondering what you should do if you don't happen to be sweating. Well, never fear, because the patch has a superabsorbent hydrogel incorporated in it, which can keep absorbing respiration for hours without getting more than 2 or 3 mm thicker than it was at the beginning.

As for power, it gets it from whatever smartphone happens to be in the vicinity. Ideally, you would wear the patch during a normal work day, and later deliver it to your doctor along with the readings recorded on your handset.

Currently, the patch measures sodium and chloride concentrations, but future versions should be able to detect amino acids, metabolites, electrolytes, proteins and even small molecules.

Size and design

The patch is about the length of your palm and half as wide. It's not the sort of thing you'll be comfortable wearing exposed, so you'll want to wear a long-sleeved shirt or something.

Human trials will begin later this year. In the meantime, a Bluetooth-capable version of the patch will be created, likely to be released in early 2015.