One drop of blood is enough to check if someone has enough vitamin D in their blood. The Micro Sampling Kit from Brightlabs makes this possible. The company develops the method to give people more insight into their health. Bart Jansen, a Business developer at Brightlands explains: “We are becoming increasingly aware of our own health, but have no idea whether and what we actually need to become or stay healthy. A check on what your body needs is often done too late. In most cases only when you are ill. With the Micro Sampling Kit, we want to know beforehand. Compare it to a car: it also gets regular maintenance and then the necessary parts are replaced.”
This way, according to him, you can take immediate action if necessary. In the winter months, for example, when people suffer from various symptoms such as reduced resistance, energy shortage and muscle cramps due to a Vitamin D deficiency. Complaints that according to Jansen are easy to solve, but then you have to know that you have a shortage.
General practitioners only test if there is a medical necessity, they do not test preventively. That is why Brightlabs will mainly offer the tests to companies or institutions that do. “You can perform the test entirely yourself, but you actually want advice on how to do it. Companies that perform preventive medical research and dieticians are particularly interesting to us. In addition, we will work on creating a total package. There is already cooperation with companies on the Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo and with Maastricht University’s Healthy Eating and Food Innovation laboratories located on the campus,” says Jansen.
The kit works with a utility needle and paper tips for blood collection. Just like the GP who sends blood tubes to the lab, you will receive the results of the test after six days via an online code. The kit has been tested with almost three hundred samples and gives similar values to a test in the hospital. The goal is to expand the package further in the short term. This year it should be possible to measure vitamins A, B, E and minerals.
