The American Journal of Tropical Medicine article published this month assessing centrifuge’s accuracy and the team reports very good results when comparing this simple device to a benchtop centrifuge.
The salad spinner centrifuge can spin 30 samples at once and is done in 10 minutes. Though the team notes that components cost $30, we think they could be source for less than half of that.....from China! The centrifuge takes 2 hours to put together, and is assembled with hot glue.
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.
Be sure to take a look at the youtube video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COOIjVGPCt4&feature=player_embedded)