Development of healthcare chips checking life-style-related diseases

We investigated biochips that provide a home medical diagnosis as an application of miniaturized analysis systems. As the objective, an electronic blood collection system employing a painless needle was developed. Both the healthcare chip and hepatic function examining chip were studied based on the introduction of plasmas separated from a trace amount of blood. The former electrochemically measures pH, Na+, K+, glucose and BUN, and the latter measures the γ-GTP, GOT and GPT using a colorimetric analysis. The fluids of the blood in the micro-channel were controlled by centrifugal force. These chips are useful for checking life-style-related diseases.