An announcement
made by the Institut Teknologi Bandung highlighted a device that was created by
three of its students that can measure a person’s haemoglobin level in a
non-invasive manner.
The final year students from the Institute
of Teknologi Bandung School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics (STEI)
held an innovation exhibit called, “Electrical Engineering Days 2018” to
display various final projects that use electrical systems to solve problems.
One of the projects that were on display
was Hemocare. The project was developed by Resti Oktia, Clinton Elian, and
Putut Dewantoro. The device can measure haemoglobin levels in patient’s blood in
a non-invasive manner. There is no more
need to take a blood sample in order to measure it.
According to Resti, one of the developers,
the current invasive blood test method is not effective because it makes use of
a syringe.
Resti explained, “Taking a blood sample
with a syringe scares a lot of people. Moreover, the use of syringe can
sometimes cause infection.”
Doing blood tests in laboratories needs to
be done holistically, even though the patient only needs to have his
haemoglobin level checked.
Resti explained, “Blood tests in
laboratories should be done holistically, which is expensive. Hence, we wanted
to create a device wherein you only need to spend once, and then can be
repeatedly used afterwards.”
Add to that is the fact that results from
lab tests take time whereas using the device would normally take just 30
seconds before the results are shown.
The three students were mentored by Dr
Hasballah Zakaria, ST. M.Sc and Dr Yoke Saadia Irawan MT during the whole
utilisation of the project. The designing of Hemocare was made from August 2017
until the end of that year. The actual making of the device was done from
January to April 2018.
To use the device, the patient only needs
to have their finger clamped onto the device. After which, the patient needs to
wait for several seconds until the result is displayed on the smartphone
applications that are connected through Bluetooth.
Resti shared how Hemocare works. He said, “Found
inside the fingers is blood. In the blood are colours that can be absorbed by
the Photoplethysmograph signal (PPG). Then, it will be forwarded to a diode
sensor that will receive the light absorption.
Resti hopes that the product can be mass
produced in the future. He shared, “If it is mass produced, we estimate its price
as less than 100,000 IDR.” The price, he is much more affordable than the price
of a blood test in laboratory.
But before mass production, there are still several
things to fix. The sensor and the casing are currently too big for the
components.