Seventh Sense Biosystems (Cambridge, Mass.) has received CE Mark approval for its Touch Activated Phlebotomy (TAP) blood collection platform, just seven months after beginning to enroll patients for clinical trials. Packaged in a disk device that measures just under 5 cm in diameter, it features micro-needles to puncture through the upper layer of the skin and take blood from the patient’s capillaries for a pain-free draw. Despite the small size, the TAP platform can draw up to 20 micro liters of whole blood, a sufficient volume for many tests. With access to the capillaries, the needles utilize microfluidic principles to extract the blood and can release anticoagulants if necessary. Once the blood is drawn, it is not visible to the patient and remains hidden inside the TAP device. This feature, along with the near  painless process, should help reduce patient anxiety. The TAP device was designed with extreme simplicity, requiring only the push of a button for an extraction. And since finding a good vein will no longer be necessary for a lot of cases, clinicians should also find blood draws considerably less painful.

Seventh Sense Biosystems hopes to have FDA approval by the end of the year. They are also working on improving the device to become an all-in-one blood collector and analyzer in the future.

source:Seventh Sense Biosystems