To improve personalized medical care, a rapid inexpensive method for determining a patient’s genetic predisposition for potential drug interactions or diseases is needed. Current technology is expensive and can take up to two weeks to return results. A microfluidic device made of glass has been developed that allows for genetic characteristic identification from a small sample of DNA. To obtain accurate results, a small sample of DNA is amplified to allow for better detection. The amplification process requires the DNA to be thermocycled between two temperatures. The current method to produce thermocycling takes up to one hour of set up time before testing can begin. For this product to be viable for market, a more precise and faster thermocycling device must be developed.

A fluid handling system is also necessary for the product to be viable in the marketplace. Currently, the fluid containing the DNA is pumped into the lab on a chip device using a syringe and syringe pump. With this method it takes approximately 30 minutes to run one sample of DNA and the cleaning protocol through the lab on a chip device. This method is time consuming and wasteful of DNA. A system is needed that can rapidly facilitate this process and allow for different samples of DNA to be run in sequence.