Healthcare Chip for Home Medical Diagnosis

A calorimetric measurement chip combined with electronic blood collection using a painless needle has been developed. The chip enables us to measure 3 items of triglyceride, total-cholesterol and HDL from whole blood of 6 mu L. The centrifugal force is used for a series of process of the separation of plasma from blood, simultaneous metering of plasma/reagents, and mixing of plasma/reagents. Freeze-dried reagents including 5 wt% toreharose was effective for long-term preservation of reagents. Collaboration with a medical doctor revealed that values for above 3 items measured employing both a commercial blood analyzer and our chip were almost same.