TASK: Do a feasibility study for a next generation blood analyzer. Designed for third world areas, the instrument will be shipped by UPS so must meet their size and weight restrictions. It must also be self-contained with no external needs except power. On board, lyophilized reagents would need to be refrigerated after activation. With no DI water pipette tips would need to be disposable and conductive for liquid level sense at a cost < 2 cents. It should be able to do serial dilutions and also able to do rate and end point measurements from 340 to 700 nM.

SOLUTION: It soon became obvious that the standard circular configurations prevalent for this type of instrument would not fit in our envelope, so we developed a matrix design. A proprietary spectrometer with 256 measurement points allowed 1.5 nM steps. We developed a proprietary pipette tip, which provided 600 on-board disposable tips each in two sizes, 3 - 60µL for sample and 3 -600µL for reagents. Reagents are kept at 4°C and samples are preheated and kept at 37°C during reaction. All other results are proprietary. Interested entities should contact the Barker Design Group.