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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Andrew Morris designed a circuit that could detect a stroke victim's groan and convert the sound into a signal so caregivers would know when help was needed.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
On April 21, NASA launched a novel project, putting into orbit three satellites that employ an off-the-shelf commercial smartphone as the control system.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
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 ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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
0 
