The "Sally Centrifuge" is the brainchild of students who are part of Rice 360˚: Institute for Global Health Technologies, an engineering program for global health challenges. In short, the centrifuge is made of a salad spinner, and allows technicians to separate blood where there is no electricity.

The salad spinner is used as the centrifuge, spinning small capillary tubes filled with blood for about ten minutes. A simple measuring device held up to the tube can determine red blood cell volume relative to total blood volume and estimate whether the patient is anemic. The device is made with hair combs and a manual salad spinner.

The teams are testing the centrifuge in Malawi, Ecuador and Swaziland.