Assessing hemoglobinometers for maternal care: landscape analysis of commercial products and late-stage prototypes for anemia screening

In low- and middle-income countries, many women experience anemia during pregnancy due to insufficient dietary intake of key micronutrients, parasitic infections, hemoglobinopathies, and chronic infections. Maternal anemia increases perinatal risks for both mothers and infants, and slow progress to reduce the prevalence may be due in part to the lack of affordable tools to quantify hemoglobin levels in antenatal care (ANC) clinics. A simple, inexpensive, accurate, and robust diagnostic is needed to measure hemoglobin in ANC.

PATH sought to understand and assess the accuracy and operational fit of current anemia diagnostic tools. Our approach began with the development of a target product profile and a landscape of commercially available/emerging diagnostics for anemia testing.

We then identified promising candidate technologies and conducted laboratory verification testing and usability testing in a representative ANC setting.

This project resulted in a body of evidence that can be used to evaluate and select promising anemia diagnostic technologies to take to scale now and in the future.

Corporate author(s): PATH

Publication date: March 2020

Available materials

  1. English

    1. Assessing hemoglobinometers for maternal care - Target product profile and landscape analysis 118.3 KB PDF
    2. Assessing hemoglobinometers for maternal care: landscape analysis of commercial products and late-stage prototypes for anemia screening 446.8 KB PDF
    3. Diagnostics Instrument: Hemoglobinometer Target Product Profile 118.3 KB PDF
    4. TrueHb Hemometer Usability Evaluation 443.7 KB PDF

  2. English

    1. Potential new tool for anemia screening: An evaluation of the performance and usability of the TrueHb Hemometer. (2020, March 12). PubMed Central