If you are a Phlebotomy technician, you know that your job can be a thankless one. You draw blood from people under Doctor’s orders for lab tests, which usually means you have to deal with a lot of people with needle phobias and other neuroses surrounding blood.
Now it looks like there may be a technology that will make having a Phlebotomist on staff unnecessary. It’s called “TAP” (short for Touch-Activated Phlebotomy) and it worked by sending several micro-needles under the skin at once to collect your blood. The needles are so small that you wouldn’t feel it, and there would be no trace of the venipuncture on your skin.
It would be bloodless.
If a Doctor or Nurse can extract samples so quickly and easily, there may not be much need for a dedicated Phlebotomist on staff.
How Faraway Is This Technology?
Seventh Sense Biosystems will need FDA approval for the technology first. The company has just been acquired by a giant medical company called Sartorius so we imagine that they believe in the feasibility (and profitability) of this technology.
Of course part of a Phlebotomist’s job description is to relax patient’s fears and anxiety about blood. Well, TAP actually extracts the patient’s blood in a way that is invisible to the patient. To top it off, the needles are also capable of releasing anti-coagulants as needed into the patient’s bloodstream.
This is just the first step in creating a blood-less medical tests that are so safe and un-intrusive that you could start seeing them installed automatically in homes to take care of all the family members inside.