Innovation

Young and old, nobody likes needles. But we all have to put up with them from time to time, whether you’re doing “something amazing today” by giving blood, or just having a plain old blood test.

The Luminetx VeinViewer claims to make the process a bit less painful, by showing the needle-wielding nurse exactly where to poke to get that vein straight off. It uses near infrared light to detect veins inside our body. The near infrared light reflects off tissues surrounding veins but not the blood cells inside veins. The system picks up the reflected light, processes it, and then beams a picture back onto our skin, highlighting the vein locations. The result is a strange green web on a piece of plastic on your arm, so those stab-happy medical people can get it right first time!

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