The University of Strathclyde has secured Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) funding to develop and assess a novel blood salvage device to reduce loss of blood in severely injured personnel during war.
The device has the ability to directly return the blood lost due to open injury, or to concentrate the blood and return it in the form of concentrated blood cells.
The device can easily be put into use in the field and does not require electrical power to operate.
Additionally, once the casualty has been admitted at a hospital location, the device can be transferred to a base station platform and can be used as a traditional blood salvage device.
The device is expected to reduce the requirement for donor blood transfusions in the treatment of injured personnel.
University of Strathclyde department of biomedical engineering Professor Terry Gourlay said: "The funding support we received from CDE enabled us to develop prototype devices, test these and secure the interest of a commercial partner to take our life saving technology closer to clinical deployment."
Patents for the new technology have been filed by the university and a business partner has been secured to commercialise the technology with the aim of deploying the device under clinical conditions.
Image: The technology can be easily deployed and is independent of electrical power. Photo: courtesy of Crown copyright.