An artist's concept of how a device designed by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Dialysis-Like Therapeutics program would remove "dirty" blood and replace it with "clean" blood in the treatment of sepsis. (Source: DARPA)
Looks like some great potential for mitigating one of the greater risks to injured soliders. When you liken it to equipment used for dialysis, though, I'm imaging these are pretty big machines, which seems to me that it would be more realistic for these to be part of combat hospitals as opposed to units engaged in the field.
Beth, I am not so sure they would be large. It is amazing how compact the technologies mentioned in the article can be. Elizabeth, do you have any information on that?
This is exciting stuff. When I was in college, I worked on a portable membrane filtration system for red blood cells. For long-term storage, red blood cells are treated with glycerol and frozen, but the glycerol needs to be removed before they can be used in a transfusion. The system we designed was a closed-loop system which used refractive index and UV spectrophotometry to ensure that the blood cells were clean. This DARPA project is obviously much more complex.
Besides being used to treat wounded soldiers, I could imagine this technology being used to treat maternal sepsis and neonatal sepsis, which claim the lives of many mothers and their newborn children, especially in developing countries.
This looks like a great idea and the latest in battlefield medicine, which has a long history of innovations in emergency surgery and certain preventive techniques. I wouldn't be surprised if DARPA-funded research has shrunk the size of these machines dramatically from what's used for dialysis.
It's good to see technology developed for those who are injured on the battlefield. It will also be good to see technology like this transferred to the non-military world of medicine.
My mind just boggles at the possibilities if/when this device comes into existence. If it could target and remove all 'abnormal' blood cells .......... WOW! Bye-bye to HIV, Cancer, Common Cold.
Good to see this technology being developed. A relatively young and healthy friend of mine contracted sepsis and was hours away from death before it was finally identified and before the drugs took effect. It was very scary. I hope that the cost of the device is also reasonable so that this equipment can be purchased by many hospitals.
I lost a friend to sepsis a few years back By time they recognized it, it was too late. By one account as many as 750,000 people a year are afflicted in the US alone. What's good for the battlefield is good at home as well.
If such a device can be produced without the typical complications of damaging blood cells, then it would be a "miracle class" machine, with a wonderful potential of curing a number of problems.
A device like this could justify the DARPA budget if they never had another good idea!
By experimenting with the photovoltaic reaction in solar cells, researchers at MIT have made a breakthrough in energy efficiency that significantly pushes the boundaries of current commercial cells on the market.
In a world that's going green, industrial operations have a problem: Their processes involve materials that are potentially toxic, flammable, corrosive, or reactive. If improperly managed, this can precipitate dangerous health and environmental consequences.
With LEDs dropping in price virtually every year, automakers have begun employing them, not only on luxury vehicles, but on entry-level models, as well.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 4
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
A quick look into the merger of two powerhouse 3D printing OEMs and the new leader in rapid prototyping solutions, Stratasys. The industrial revolution is now led by 3D printing and engineers are given the opportunity to fully maximize their design capabilities, reduce their time-to-market and functionally test prototypes cheaper, faster and easier. Bruce Bradshaw, Director of Marketing in North America, will explore the large product offering and variety of materials that will help CAD designers articulate their product design with actual, physical prototypes. This broadcast will dive deep into technical information including application specific stories from real world customers and their experiences with 3D printing. 3D Printing is
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
3 
