The Medical Futurist, Author of Your Map to the Future, Global Keynote Speaker, and Futurist Researcher
I've been writing about the autonomous robot that can take a blood sample for years because drawing blood is a repetitive, yet risky procedure where human variability (e.g. how the phlebotomist woke up) is dangerous to patients. There haven't been news on this front for some time but now Vitestro has developed an autonomous venipuncture device to fully automate the manual blood drawing procedure in hospitals and laboratories. Check out the video!
Wow, this could be transformative! I have so many questions including diversity of population that the device was clinically tested and validated. Will look into this more. Thanks for sharing!
This is amazing. I've seen firsthand how repetitive blood draws can be exhausting for patients with edema - if this can more precisely locate veins, I think this tech will go a long way in improving the patient experience.
Interesting. Could be a huge help indeed. Unless it helps manage the various steps involved in blood collection, inserting tech into this one singular stage (venous phlebotomy) doesn’t solve the workflow of blood labs. So many immediate questions: ————————————————- Minimum staffing requirement and throughout? Any stats on success/failure rates? Especially if alternate arm has to be used? Is it loading the collected blood into separate tubes based on specimen requirements? Is it also automating any part of the post-collection processing such as centrifugation or cooling? How is it confirming/verifying the patient ID?
Thanks Bertalan Meskó, MD, PhD for this insightful post ,It's a must this kind of robots because It's so efficient and Time saving for Care providers but as far as i'm concerned, this device should be calibrated and checked from Time to Time in order to keep Its performance and Its precision.
Of all the people who take blood, phlebotomists are probably the best, but this would be great for out of hours when doctors and nurses are pushed for time or faced with drawing blood from patients who don't have good veins. I wonder how the machines would cope in these cases.
Bertalan Meskó, MD, PhD I went for routine bloodwork recently and post pandemic was stunned by how “automated” the entire workflow was for Quest Diagnostics … the front desk was a ghost town, you could see where 3-to-4 admins once sat. There was zero human interaction until the phlebotomist checked my ID/Order. We chatted about how you can’t get a blood draw anymore, the skills are not being taught. The whole experience felt like the “future” albeit super efficient but a bit dystopian. This = 🤯 Even if Vitestro takes another couple years of development. This is a done deal. Great post.
Cool!