Hand-cranked device tells blood type and red cell levels in 1 minute
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When someone is badly injured, doctors urgently need two facts: the patient’s blood type, so that a transfusion is safe, and their hematocrit, the share of the blood made up of red blood cells, which reveals blood loss or anemia. Hospitals measure both with large machines that need electricity and trained staff, which are often unavailable in ambulances, disaster zones or remote clinics.
A team led by professor Chien-Fu Chen at National Taiwan University has developed a simple alternative: a small plastic chip spun by a hand-cranked centrifuge that needs no electricity. It uses only about 3 microliters of finger-prick blood. The study is published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics.
Turning the crank pushes the blood through winding channels preloaded with reagents for the A, B and Rh blood groups. If the blood matches, its red blood cells clump together and are trapped at the channel’s end by a gap roughly one-tenth the width of a human hair, forming a red band that shows the blood type at a glance. The band’s length also reveals the hematocrit: more red blood cells make a longer band read against scale marks on the chip.
In tests on 21 hospital patient samples, the results closely matched those of standard hospital analyzers, and readings stayed consistent no matter how fast the crank was turned. The whole test takes about one minute.
“Our goal is to bring two essential blood tests out of the laboratory and into the hands of first responders, with no electricity or specialized training needed,” says corresponding author Chen, a distinguished professor at the Institute of Applied Mechanics at National Taiwan University.
Publication details
Yuh-Shiuan Chien et al., Hand-powered micro-slit–gated microfluidics for concurrent blood typing and hematocrit estimation, Biosensors and Bioelectronics (2027). DOI: 10.1016/j.bios.2026.119215
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Hand-cranked device tells blood type and red cell levels in 1 minute (2026, October 17)
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