White blood cell count is a good indicator for determining when your body may be fighting an infection or can indicate when you are more susceptible to certain diseases. However, there isn’t an accurate at-home device that can tell you your specific white blood cell count. While there is a device that is soon to hit the market, it is only able to tell you if you have a low white blood cell count but the number of what is considered normal varies depending on the individual. The article “Evaluation of Patients with Leukocytosis” explains each type of white blood cell and what it means when it is too high or low as well as what the normal range is for a newborn, infant, child, pregnant woman, and adults.

        We would like to address this issue by creating an at-home device that can count white blood cells. This innovation would be helpful for the average person since people fight infections all the time as well as cancer patients who are at risk of having a low white blood cell count due to chemotherapy. An interesting find in the article “High White Blood Cell Count Is Associated With a Worsening of Insulin Sensitivity and Predicts the Development of Type 2 Diabetes” was that a high white blood cell count in people who have diabetes affects insulin sensitivity and is an indicator of the progression of type 2 diabetes.

        However, an issue is that current methods of counting white blood cells are costly which is something we must address since our target audience is the average person or person with diabetes or cancer which have expensive treatments and medication. We believe that taking into consideration the cost of the item and who our target audience is would increase the potential of our success.