As one of the most common medical tests, blood typing determines an individual’s blood group, providing crucial information especially for emergency occasions. This would require a rapid sensing device that can operate stand-alone for in-field applications.

Wei Chen and colleagues at Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, developed a paper-based device with inkjet-printed barcode sensing channels that allows for bood typing using smartphones. The channels show specific elution patterns to blood samples of different types because they are loaded with anti-A, anti-B, and anti-D antibodies, which can cause agglutination upon recognizing the corresponding antigens in red blood cells. The results can then be interpreted using a smartphone application.

This research presents a simple and fast strategy to analyze, store and transfer blood type data. As the platform is readily adaptable for a number of medical assays, it also sets an example for efficient point-of-care testing.

• Barcode-Like Paper Sensor for Smartphone Diagnostics: An Application of Blood Typing,
  Liyun Guan, Junfei Tian, Rong Cao, Miaosi Li, Zhaoxiang Cai, Wei Shen,
  Anal. Chem. 2014.
  DOI: 10.1021/ac503300y