Michigan start-up Sisu Global Health was awarded a $250,000 seed grant from for its Hemafuse, a manual autotransfusion device designed for use in the developing world.

The device is used to retransfuse the blood of patients who are hemorrhaging internally, and may be especially helpful in women with ruptured ectopic pregnancies, the Grand Rapids company says. It functions like a giant syringe to suction blood through a filter when a handle is raised; when the handle is depressed, the blood is transferred directly to a blood bag in a closed system.

Compared with the standard care, salvaging blood with a soup ladle and filtering it through gauze, Hemafuse is quicker to use, more resource-efficient and safer, Sisu says.

The company, which is focusing on the sub-Saharan Africa market, plans to use the grant to enhance the device’s design and injection molding and to finance initial clinical trials in Ghana, Katie Kirsch, chief marketing officer, tells Device Daily Bulletin. Data from the trials will be used to support a CE mark application, she adds.

The grant was one of 26 seed grants awarded by Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development, a global competition launched in 2011 for groundbreaking, scalable solutions to combat infant and maternal mortality. — Kellen Owings

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