When undergoing medical treatment, physicians frequently determine that a patient's vital signs — such as blood pressure and heart rate — need to be closely monitored. For most patients today, this means a variety of wires and sensors will be attached to their bodies. But thanks to technology developed at NASA,...

Three innovations address the needs of the medical world with regard to microfluidic manipulation and testing of physiological samples in ways that can benefit point-of-care needs for patients such as premature infants, for which drawing of blood for continuous tests can be life-threatening in their own right,...

An obstacle to successful cancer drug therapy is the existence of drug delivery barriers, which result in insufficient and heterogeneous drug delivery to the tumor tissue. This drug delivery problem not only limits the clinical application of existing chemotherapeutics,...

Blood loss is a major cause of death among combat casualties, accounting for nearly half of all deaths on the battlefield. The great majority of these deaths is due to intracavitary hemorrhage that cannot be controlled by traditional methods such as tourniquets or pressure...

The NASA liquid cooling/ventilating garment (LCVG) currently in use was developed over 40 years ago. With the commencement of a greater number of extra-vehicular activity (EVA) procedures with the construction of the International Space Station, problems of astronaut comfort, as well as the reduction of the...

Joining severed vessels is a recurring problem in trauma and surgery. The basic technology of joining vessels using sutures has been available for centuries, but remains a slow and tedious process. A complete system for micro-anastomosis of vessels was developed that involves a laser in...

A lab-on-a-chip was developed that is capable of extracting biochemical indicators from urine samples and generating their surface-enhanced Raman spectra (SERS) so that the indicators can be quantified and identified. The development was motivated by the need to monitor and assess the effects of extended weightlessness,...

Oral mucosal drug delivery is an alternative method of systemic drug delivery that offers several advantages over both injectable and enteral methods. Since the oral mucosa is highly vascularised, drugs that are absorbed through the oral mucosa directly enter the systemic circulation,...

This design of the liquid-cooling garment for NASA spacesuits allows the suit to remove metabolic heat from the human body more effectively, thereby increasing comfort and performance while reducing system mass. The garment is also more flexible, with fewer restrictions on...

A highly efficient means of microfluidic mixing has been created for use with the rHEALTH sensor — an elliptical mixer and passive curvilinear mixing patterns. The rHEALTH sensor provides rapid, handheld, complete blood count, cell differential counts, electrolyte measurements, and...