A device the size of a toaster may soon revolutionize neonatal care, decoding a newborn’s immune response from a single drop of blood in just 15 minutes. Meet BLIPI, the tiny tech with life-saving potential.
Key Points at a Glance
- BLIPI analyzes a newborn’s immune system using just 0.05 ml of blood
- Delivers real-time results in under 15 minutes
- Detects severe conditions like sepsis and NEC early, enabling fast treatment
- Portable and ideal for bedside or rural settings
- Could become a new gold standard for neonatal diagnostics
Each year, hundreds of thousands of premature infants around the globe face a silent war raging inside their fragile bodies — infections like sepsis and necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) that can escalate in hours and prove fatal if undetected. Until now, the tools to fight this war have lagged behind. Diagnoses have required milliliters of blood and hours, if not days, of lab work — an eternity in a neonatal intensive care unit.
Enter BLIPI, the BiophysicaL Immune Profiling for Infants, a first-of-its-kind diagnostic device developed by researchers from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) and KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Small enough to be cradled in two hands, BLIPI offers what could be a paradigm shift: immune profiling at the cot side, using just a single drop of blood and a 15-minute window to decode a baby’s immune health in real time.
Designed for neonatal wards, BLIPI requires only 0.05 ml of blood — a minuscule volume compared to traditional tests that can demand up to 1 ml. For infants with a total blood volume as low as 50 ml, this difference is critical. The device uses advanced microfluidics to analyze how immune cells change in shape and size when reacting to infections. Rather than simply searching for pathogens, BLIPI tells clinicians how the baby’s immune system is actively responding, making it a real-time mirror into an infant’s internal battlefront.
During clinical studies, the device successfully profiled 19 infants — both full-term and preterm — and detected changes consistent with standard diagnostic markers such as C-reactive protein levels and white blood cell counts. In one remarkable case, BLIPI identified the early immune response of a premature baby who later developed sepsis. The speed and precision of the detection could make the difference between life and death.
“We built BLIPI around the real limitations of neonatal care,” says Kerwin Kwek, one of the study’s co-lead authors. “Speed, sensitivity, and minimal invasiveness were our guiding principles. This is about bringing answers to the bedside fast enough to matter.”
The device’s portability means it’s especially promising for resource-limited hospitals, where transporting samples to central labs can introduce dangerous delays. And while the primary application lies in critical neonatal care, researchers also see potential for BLIPI in clinical trials and pharmaceutical research, enabling real-time immune monitoring in vulnerable populations.
MIT Professor Jongyoon Han, the project’s lead investigator, sees BLIPI as emblematic of a broader shift in diagnostics: “We’re moving away from lab-dependent systems toward real-time, patient-centric diagnostics. BLIPI is not just a tool, it’s a new lens through which we can understand — and save — our most fragile lives.”
Future plans include scaling up trials across more diverse populations and refining the design for mass production. But if BLIPI lives up to its promise, it won’t just be another gadget in the NICU — it will be a guardian, alert and ready, watching over life at its most vulnerable.
Source: MIT News
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