SBIR Phase I: Development of a smart container for mobile blood banking system used in cold blood storage and transport in extreme environments

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to increase the availability of cold stored medical therapies for point of injury care in a prehospital setting, as well as to increase cold chain payload transparency with real time data tracking for a wide variety of biological materials. Increased cold chain transparency via internet of things (IoT) connected devices will allow clinicians and inventory managers to confidently push therapies outside of a hospital with full confidence in their efficacy upon administration to severely wounded patients where care is needed prior to or during transport to a medical facility. Real time data on payload conditions may enable clinicians know exactly what the payload temperatures are without having to manually open a container, exposing payloads to heat, dust, sun and other undesirable conditions to determine the status of their cold-stored biomaterials. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project specifically targets the high mortality rates associated with trauma wounds in the field or at the accident site. By providing a modular cooling, storage, and transportation system, the use of preferred whole blood and blood component therapies will be more readily available for life saving interventions. The goal of this project is to identify lightweight, mobile, and modular cooler and storage devices to validate small unit, interchangeable blood banking solutions to support clinicians in a prehospital setting. Additional research goals focus on sensor integration both inside and outside of device to use data driven learning and in a future state artificial intelligence to maximize use of temperature sensitive therapies from an inventory management perspective. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.