Non-invasive/Minimally Invasive Blood Test for Newborn/Neonate Parameters

Problem Statement: Blood drawing or collection from newborns for diagnosis purpose or even for routine screening, is one of the major challenges associated with newborn/neonate critical care in developing countries due to lack of skilled person, insufficient amount of blood in a newborn’s body for collection, and many other reasons. For different blood parameters to test; it requires a lot of blood from newborn body and often from different locations which make it very difficult to get sufficient amount of blood and even if it gets enough blood, the tiny newborn body has to go through lot of sufferings and pain. The whole procedure is also emotionally very difficult for the persons who draw/collect blood from newborns. Therefore, to make this whole blood collection process convenient and less/no painful, a minimally invasive (if not fully non-invasive) procedure is badly needed.

Description: In this project, we expect to develop a low-cost technology to make the procedure of blood drawing from newborns a more convenient, less painful and easy-to-use. Since there are many parameters or components of blood to test, not every parameter may be possible to measure non-invasively, but few parameters such as blood glucose, or similar components of blood can be possible to measure with a non-invasive technique using some kind of harmless light-wave or imaging or using sound/ultrasound wave. The parameters that are not possible to measure non-invasively, we expect to measure them by using minimal amount of blood such as a typical commercially available glucose meter which requires a single blood-drop to measure the glucose level in blood.

Although, it may not be possible to develop the proto-type of the desired technology in 2-3 months, but we would like to study the current laboratory procedures for blood test in the local diagnostic centers and then to analyze different blood components about their responses to different light/sound wave for possible non-invasive measurements. If not non-invasive, then we would try to find out a way to measure with minimal amount of blood requirement. We would like to continue the project until we develop the desired proto-type.

Required Qualifications: The potential candidate is expected to have engineering/physics/mathematics or similar/relevant technological background to work in this project. He/she must have a high passion to contribute to a real-world problem with their skills and knowledge by realizing the current scenario of neonatal heath care in developing countries.

Contact: Dr. Kafiul Islam, Project Supervisor; E-mail: kafiiut@gmail.com