Your Next Blood Test Might Not Require BleedingYour Next Blood Test Might Not Require Bleeding

But the problem wasn’t in the availability of treatment, it was in the diagnosis. In India, public healthcare is handled primarily by ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers, not doctors. Typically, testing for anemia involves drawing blood and testing with expensive medical machinery that requires a trained technician. One can see very quickly how this can become time-consuming and cost prohibitive in some areas of the world.

Ingawale, an engineer, also saw the need for a solution: It would have to be simple enough for an ASHA worker to use, small and portable, and also be needleless (to avoid the complications associated with handling medical waste). He co-founded BioSense Technologies with the goal of creating this solution and, after 32 unsuccessful attempts, they succeeded.

The ToucHb is a non-invasive, mobile phone-sized device that uses wavelengths of light to instantly measure hemoglobin, oxygen saturation, and heart rate, enabling workers to diagnose anemia at the point of care. The device is based on a principle called photoplethysmography (say that 10 times fast). By passing light through tissue (the fingertip in the ToucHb’s case) and measuring how much light is transmitted, absorbed, or scattered, scientists can get a sense of a patient’s hemoglobin.

While the device is still being developed, BioSense hopes that the ToucHb will become ubiquitous, not just in developing or remote nations, but throughout the world. Hopefully creating one less problem for health workers.

 Ingawale discusses the ToucHb at TED 2012: