Image credit – Unnati Chauhan
We’ve all been to the doctors where we might have to have our blood taken. Depending on you and also the person drawing the blood, this might be a relatively quick and painless process. However, sometimes due to some people’s veins being harder to find, or the lack of experience of the person taking your blood, it might take them several painful tries.
However, researchers at Rutgers University have created a robot that seems to be able to do a better job than humans at drawing blood. According to the researchers, the robot had an 87% to 97% success rate depending on how easy the veins were to find. This is versus health care professionals in which based on previous studies, they had a 73% success rate with patients with visible veins, and 60% success rate without palpable veins.
While this robot will not only make the process a lot simpler and painless for patients, but it could also help free up the time of health care professionals who could be doing other things. According to Josh Leipheimer, the lead author of the paper, “A device like ours could help clinicians get blood samples quickly, safely and reliably, preventing unnecessary complications and pain in patients from multiple needle insertion attempts.”
The researchers also imagine that in the future, the robot could also be used for other common medical procedures, including dialysis and IV catheterization.
Filed in . Read more about Health and Science. Source: news.rutgers.edu