University at Buffalo researchers advance 'lab on a chip' technology

Published February 15, 2018 This content is archived.

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An article in Business First features research by Kwang Oh, professor of electrical engineering and biomedical engineering, who is developing technology that will allow researchers to create a “lab on a chip” that will allow medical personnel to use a cell phone or similar handheld device to draw a patient’s blood and provide in-depth medical information on the spot.

“The lab-on-a-chip technology is still far away from commercialization. There are a lot of challenges and I tried to tackle the practice challenges,” he said. “We have to handle blood or other solutions without using external power. So what we are using is some special property of microstructures based on capillary force. The other thing is vacuum, kind of low-pressure. These two technologies are able to solve some commercial issues but it’s still far away, practically speaking.”

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