The DNA Medicine Institute won a $100,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a hand-held point-of-care blood sensor.

Eugene Chan, president and chief scientific officer of the Cambridge, Mass.-based company, told MassDevice that DNA Medicine has already developed a "breadboard" prototype of the instrument.

"We are going to be using the grant for testing for acute blood loss scenarios," Chan told us.

The Phase I grant, part of the Small Business Innovation Research program, comes from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. It’s aimed at shrinking the refrigerator-sized hematology analyzers used in hospitals to a palm-sized device, designed to help diagnose acute blood loss, sepsis and other blood conditions. The technology will likely be integrated into DNA Medicine’s Universal Blood Sensor platform, designed to perform all hospital tests on a small point-of-care device, according to a press release.

The company has received at least five SBIR grants from the National Air and Space Administration for its nanoscale diagnostics technology,dating back to 2004, according to its website.