Impoverished residents often encounter challenges limiting their healthcare, including shortages of healthcare professionals, essential medical technology, and sterile facilities. This further drives sickness within underdeveloped countries. A complete blood count, or CBC, test is generally the first step in the diagnosis. It measures many blood parameters and provides the physician with information that would narrow the possible illnesses. The machinery involved in a CBC test can be challenging to implement in underdeveloped populations. The size, costs, and overall requirements for its placement make it unfit to function in such environments.

The development of a CBC point-of-care (POC) device would effectively replicate large-scale CBC machinery’s function and quickly give patients results. Through microfluidics, the device will separate whole blood into red blood cells (RBCs), white blood cells (WBCs), and platelets. Dielectrophoretic separation methods utilize electrodes within the chip’s main channel to further separate these blood cells into individual channels specific to CBC parameters that will later be counted via flow cytometry.

The handheld device would not weigh more than 2-3 lbs, with dimensions around 160mm x 100 mm x 50mm. The device should produce efficient results within 2-4 min. Estimations show that the device would be able to present products with 90-100% accuracy. Currently, the device is at the paper-prototype level, focusing on implementing the critical parameters of the CBC test in the device. Work towards a wireframe prototype, estimated to be finished in August 2019, adding more panels and features to this device.