Enabling next generation patient-centric microsampling technology

Patient-centric sampling, where patients collect their samples themselves and ship them to a healthcare facility for analysis, had an enormous impact during the Covid-19 pandemic allowing easy testing of present or past viral infection.

In Sweden, we pioneered patient-centric blood testing already April 2020 and could present the first real data on the viral exposure of the population.

Later our technology was implemented by Regions in Sweden and by the Public Health Agency with great success.Inspired by the work we did during the pandemic, characterizing humoral responses to viral proteins in only 10 µl dry blood samples and new methods from leading scientist, I challenge my team to scale the blood volume by an order of magnitude to develop a sampling device for only 1 µl.

Such a small volume is similar to the blood collected by a mosquito and would enable completely new ways of collecting blood, effortless and pain-free.

This would enable large-scale screening and longitudinal sampling to monitor infectious events in a way that has never been possible before, potentially even in vulnerable populations such as children.

I.e. if successful we would have a tool to easily collect samples from the population with minimal burden, without risk for transmission.Here we want to show proof of concept of a miniaturized, button-sized, microsampler designed to painlessly sample and store 1 µl whole blood.