Featured in NATURE 28 SEPTEMBER 2017 | VOL 549 | NATURE Each year, at about 13,000 collection centres worldwide, phlebotomists stick needles in the veins of healthy volunteers and amass in excess of 110 million donations of blood. The volume collected is enough to...

High-intensity military medicine spurs innovations for civilians, too. By Rebecca Boyle In a war zone in Afghanistan, a roadside bomb explodes and shrapnel tears through a U.S. soldier. The blast hurls him to the ground, and blood begins to flow from multiple wounds....

Blood, blood everywhere — but not a drop when you need it. In the U.S. alone, there are around 17,000 preventable trauma deaths each year due to untreated hemorrhagic shock. Basically, that means someone loses a fatal amount of blood before they can reach the hospital...

During an emergency, having blood on hand for transfusions is critical. But blood needs proper refrigeration, making on the spot care a difficult task. But what if paramedics were equipped with bags of powdered blood cells that could be combined with water and...

Artificial blood stored as a powder could one day revolutionize emergency medicine and provide trauma victims a better chance of survival. Researchers have created an artificial red blood cell that effectively picks up oxygen in the lungs and delivers it to tissues...