The days of the blood sample routine—arm out, make a fist, find a vein, and tap in—may soon be over, thanks to a new analysis method that requires only a pinprick of blood. Traditional methods of blood sampling require intravenous extraction of several milliliters of blood. A phlebotomist then separates serum, which is frozen for transport or storage, and later thawed and analyzed. A relatively new alternative to this traditional approach uses blood samples stored as dried blood spots (DBSs). The DBS method requires only a pinprick to extract a few microliters of blood, which are blotted onto filter paper, where the sample, it has been found, remains stable.
