Children are a special group of patients. They require capillary blood sampling rather than traditional venipuncture, since it is less invasive and more tolerable for them. On top of routine CBC blood tests, additional tests such as CRP are often required as well. Due to the large number of pediatric patients, children’s hospital labs in China often face high capillary blood sample volumes, high peak sample volumes, and high CRP detection volumes. According to the team’s research, healthcare providers in charge of blood draws needed to write the serial numbers of patients out by hand, which was time-consuming. For healthcare providers in charge of blood testing, matching these handwritten serial numbers with blood samples was also slow and prone to error. When it came to capillary blood sample mixing, complicated manual procedures resulted in a heavy workload and poor repeatability. The same went for sample analysis – complicated analyzing procedures led to a heavy workload and low efficiency. As the number of samples grew, the results were delayed and the complaints came in.
