Streamlining Blood Testing
Samuel K. Sia | Biomedical Engineering
Doctors in developing countries will soon be able to use handheld devices
to collect and analyze blood tests at a patient’s bedside to diagnose infectious
and other diseases, thanks to research by Samuel K. Sia, assistant professor of
biomedical engineering at Columbia SEAS.
The devices, now undergoing field tests in Rwanda, require only a finger prick of blood and provide quantitative results in less than 20 minutes. The aim of the new technology is to significantly reduce the time between testing patients and treating them, without increasing costs or regulatory burdens.
“Nowhere is the need for new diagnostic technologies greater than in developing countries, where people suffer disproportionately from infectious disease compared to the U.S. and Europe,” says Sia.
The “lab-on-a-chip” technology uses microfluidics—the manipulation of small amounts of fluids—to miniaturize and automate routine laboratory tests onto a handheld microchip. The devices are being developed in a collaboration between Sia’s lab and Claros Diagnostics Inc., a venture capital-backed startup company that Sia co-founded in 2004.
Sia, who holds a PhD from Harvard University, received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation that supports his work in developing biocompatible microelectromechanical systems and implantable medical devices, such as glucose sensors.
A recipient of the Walter H. Coulter Early Career Award in 2008, Sia participated in the National Academy of Engineering’s U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium for the nation’s brightest young engineers in 2007.
