A group of students from Rice University have created a manually powered device to diagnose anemia from a salad spinner and other household items.
In developing countries, it can be difficult to diagnose anemia—a lack of iron in the blood—without access to electricity. The diagnosis can be a vital part of diagnosing serious conditions such as malnutrition, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, and AIDS. So what are doctors in off-the-grid remote locations, and areas that have been damaged by natural disasters, supposed to do for their patients?
Now, they may have a new, low-tech way to diagnose anemia, thanks to a group of college sophomores from Rice University, who’ve just invented a blood-separating centrifuge that only costs $30 to produce.
The college students created the device in a global health class, after being asked to come up with an idea for a way to diagnose anemia that doesn’t require electricity. The centrifuge incorporates a run-of-the-mill salad spinner, yogurt containers, combs, plastic lids, and a hot-glue gun to create a device that can be used manually to spin tubes full of blood. After ten minutes of spinning, the blood will separate into the red blood cells and the plasma, making it easy for a medical professional to see whether or not a patient is anemic and at risk for a host of other diseases.
The students plan to test their device, dubbed Sally Centrifuge, in the field this summer in Ecuador, Malawi, and Swaziland. But even though it hasn’t left the continent yet, the centrifuge has shown its strength already.
“It’s all plastic and pretty durable,” said one of the students, Lila Kerr. “We haven’t brought it overseas yet, of course, but we’ve trekked it back and forth across campus in our backpacks and grocery bags and it’s held up fine.”