Design and Utility of a Point-of-Care Microfluidic Platform to Assess Hematocrit and Blood Coagulation.

Purpose—: To develop a small volume whole blood analyzer capable of measuring the hematocrit and coagulation kinetics of whole blood.

Methods And Results—: A co-planar microfluidic chamber designed to facilitate self-driven capillary action across an internal electrical chip was developed and used to measure the electric parameters of whole human blood that had been anticoagulated or allowed to clot. To promote blood clotting, select chip surfaces were coated with a prothrombin time (PT) reagent containing lipidated tissue factor (TF), which activates the extrinsic pathway of coagulation to promote thrombin generation and fibrin formation.