Wristband Performs Blood Cell Counts to Monitor Health Anywhere

The popularity of smartwatches, activity trackers, and other wearable devices is in large part due to the hope that such tools can help monitor health. While new products keep coming out, progress on embedding sensors that can monitor things other than one’s heart rate and activity level has stalled. Now researches at Rutgers University are reporting on a smart wristband that can sample the user’s blood and perform cell counts. The device, that has electronics placed onto a flexible circuit board, uses a tiny needle to draw blood from the wrist. The blood then passes through a narrow channel fitted with gold electrodes that can count different types of cells passing by, in addition to other small objects.