The wait is hard enough
without the needles.

A fertility cycle is measured in blood (estradiol, LH, progesterone, tracked every few days through stimulation). For many patients that has meant a needle in the same arm again and again, early mornings in the clinic queue, at the most stressful time of their lives. Lancet-free microsampling rewrites it: a small touch-activated device on the upper arm, self-collected at home by the patient, no venous draw (the same hormones, on the same clinical platform to your laboratory).

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Your arm. Your kitchen table. Not the queue.
Why it matters

The treatment is gentle. The monitoring wasn’t.

Ovarian stimulation is watched in near-real time: estradiol climbing, follicles growing, the trigger timed to a rising LH. That means blood drawn again and again across a single cycle (often at dawn, before work, in the same tender arm). The science of fertility care has moved on; the blood draw hasn’t. For a patient already carrying the emotional weight of treatment, the repeated needle is the part that wears them down, and the clinic visit that has to happen at 7am is the part that leaks into the rest of life.

Frequent by designA stimulation cycle can need several hormone checks in a week (each one, until now, a venous draw).
Veins tireRepeat draws in the same arm bruise and fail, adding a second stick to an already hard morning.
Life around the clinicEarly monitoring appointments bend work, travel and childcare around the lab’s opening hours.
The device

A hormone sample, drawn at home.

The platform’s answer is YourBio TAP (touch-activated, applied to the upper arm) a halo of microneedles, not a blade. The patient collects it themselves, at home, on the morning the protocol calls for (a real whole-blood sample the laboratory runs for estradiol, LH, FSH, progesterone and hCG like any other). Because fertility patients are adults, this is exactly where at-home self-collection belongs: no clinic queue, no supervision required, no venous draw. The result follows the same route to your accredited laboratory, timed to the cycle, not the clinic’s hours.

The YourBio device on the platform →

A true story · Columbia University

The first clinic to do this.
A fertility clinic.

The Columbia University Fertility Center in New York put lancet-free collection into routine fertility monitoring, and, by their own account, became the first place anywhere to use this kind of technology in clinical care, in any specialty.

Getting there took two things at once, which is the part worth noticing: a way to collect blood that patients would tolerate, and laboratory chemistry able to read hormones from the very small amount of blood it gives you. A device on its own would not have been enough. Neither would the assay. That is the same pairing this platform is built on.

~6blood draws in a fortnight, what monitoring one stimulation cycle asks of a patientColumbia University Fertility Center
< halfthe blood used across an entire IVF cycle, against their standard drawsZev Williams, MD, PhD · on film
< 1/10pain score in a small pilot, on a scale that runs to tenColumbia University Irving Medical Center

Dozens of Columbia fertility patients have now been monitored this way. The ones who felt it most were the ones whose veins had already been through something else (a patient who had come through sixteen weeks of chemotherapy for breast cancer, another whose veins had scarred to the point where blood was being taken from the back of her hand). She went on to have a healthy baby boy.

“My veins became so scarred at one point, the phlebotomist started taking blood from the veins in my hand. The device is so easy to use and you don’t really feel it. Taking blood this way could make it much easier for some women to continue with their journey through fertility treatment.”

Gjilberta Lucaj · patient · Columbia University Fertility Center

Columbia Fertility Center Takes the Pain Out of Blood DrawsColumbia University Irving Medical Center · 4:11

Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play (no third-party request, no cookie, before that). The film is Columbia University Irving Medical Center’s, not ours. Watch it on YouTube →

Read the full story at Columbia University Irving Medical Center →

Quotes, figures and film are Columbia University Irving Medical Center’s own, reporting their programme (not ours, and not a Humans Nexus study). TAP is the YourBio device curated on the Humans Nexus platform. “Painless” throughout is how their patients and clinicians describe it; the measured figure is the pilot pain score above.

The evidence

Not a promise. A record.

The clinic in that film published what it found. Zev Williams and his team compared self-collected TAP capillary blood against a standard venous draw for fertility hormones, and titled the paper in Fertility & Sterility with their conclusion in it: painless and needle-free. That is their word for it, not ours, but it is a peer-reviewed record rather than a promise, which is the whole point of putting it here. Independently, capillary blood has been shown a valid alternative to a venous draw for the two hormones a cycle turns on, progesterone and estradiol.

“When we learned about the TAP Micro Select device, we saw a clear opportunity to make this necessary but distressing aspect of the fertility journey much easier and more tolerable for patients.”

Zev Williams, MD, PhD · Chief, Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility, Columbia University
Published & independent
FertilityYourBio
Painless, needle-free capillary blood collection for fertility hormone monitoringTemmeh-Lattin, …, Williams · Fertility & Sterility 2025;124(5):1051 · Columbia UniversityA within-patient comparison of self-collected TAP capillary blood against a venous draw for fertility hormone monitoring. The authors titled the paper “painless, needle-free”; the full pain, preference and concordance figures are in the paper (Elsevier).
Fertility
Capillary blood sampling is a valid alternative to venous for progesterone and 17β-estradiol across the menstrual cycleFrontiers in Physiology 2026 · independentCapillary blood agreed closely with a venous draw for the two hormones a cycle turns on (concordance 0).91 for progesterone and 0.92 for estradiol (supporting capillary collection for reproductive-hormone monitoring).Open-access full text (PDF)

These are independent studies of capillary blood collection, including the YourBio TAP device that Humans Nexus curates on its platform (not our own trials). Suitability is confirmed per hormone, assay and laboratory: some pre-analytical factors (for example serum-separator gel) can affect measured estradiol, so each analyte is validated with the accredited laboratory before results are reported.

On the platform

Self-collected, fully accounted for.

A sample taken at a kitchen table still has to count like one taken in a clinic. Flow carries the record: the patient’s identity attested, consent recorded, the collection guided and confirmed on the morning it’s due. From there it follows the same route as every other sample (clinical-courier pickup, documented chain of custody, an accredited laboratory) and the hormone result returns to the fertility team in time for the day’s dosing decision. Because the patient is an adult, no supervision is required; the software does the accounting the clinic used to do at the desk.

Flow, the patient companion →  ·  Identity & consent →

What it unlocks

Fertility care, fewer needles.

IVF & stimulation monitoringEstradiol and LH tracked through a cycle, without a dawn queue or a bruised arm for every check
Fertility clinics & networksFewer phlebotomy slots to staff, patients who stay in cycle, monitoring that fits their lives
At-home hormone trackingOvulation, luteal-phase and early-pregnancy hormones followed from home, on the lab’s assays
Reproductive research & trialsFrequent, low-burden hormone sampling that cohorts will actually complete

Good to know.

Can fertility hormones really be measured without a needle?

Without a lancet and without a venous draw, yes. YourBio TAP collects whole capillary blood from the upper arm through a halo of microneedles rather than a lancet or a venous draw, and the laboratory runs it for estradiol, LH, FSH, progesterone and hCG on its standard assays. A Columbia University study published in Fertility & Sterility compared self-collected TAP capillary blood with a venous draw for exactly this purpose; independently, capillary blood has been shown a valid alternative to venous for progesterone and estradiol.

Is it accurate enough to dose a cycle?

Accuracy is confirmed per hormone, assay and laboratory before any result is reported, the same standard as any capillary method. Published concordance for reproductive hormones is strong, but pre-analytical factors matter (some serum-separator tubes can lower measured estradiol, for instance), so each analyte is validated with the accredited laboratory rather than assumed.

Who collects the sample?

The patient, themselves, at home. Fertility patients are adults, so this is where at-home self-collection belongs, no clinic visit and no supervision required. Flow guides the collection, attests identity and records consent so the sample is fully accounted for.

How does it reach the laboratory in time?

Like every sample the platform tracks: clinical-courier pickup, temperature-managed where the assay requires it, documented chain of custody from the doorstep to laboratory accessioning (timed so the hormone result is back for the day&rsquo);s dosing decision.

What can be tested?

The device collects liquid whole blood (the same matrix as a venous draw, in microsample volume). Beyond the core cycle hormones, the validated panel is confirmed with the accredited laboratory for the specific programme.

The evidence base

Everything published on collecting blood this way.

The peer-reviewed record for liquid capillary blood from the upper arm (the reproductive-hormone work first, then the wider validation and the honest limits). This is the same index the pediatrics and device pages read from, so a paper cited in one place says the same thing in the others.

12 papers

Sample type

Collection format

Device

Topic

Access

Fertility
Larger-volume capillary blood sampling is a valid alternative to assess progesterone and 17β-estradiol for cycle phase identificationSchlie et al. · Frontiers in Physiology · 2025 · Open accessCapillary samples of 100–250 µL taken alongside venous draws twice weekly across a full menstrual cycle agreed closely for progesterone and 17β-estradiol (concordance 0.911 and 0.919, minimal bias) (accurate enough to classify cycle phase and to flag anovulatory or luteal-phase-deficient cycles). The capillary blood was taken from the earlobe, so this validates the matrix and the volume rather than any one collection device.Open-access full text (PDF)
YourBio
Comparing capillary blood collection technologies: patient experience, device performance and clinical accuracyCollier et al. · Bioanalysis · 2025 · PaywalledA head-to-head of four upper-arm capillary devices (incl. TAP Micro Select) versus fingerstick and venous: experience and performance varied by device with none clearly superior, while analyte correlations with venous were similar across all.
Evaluation of a Simplified Upper-Arm Device for Vacuum-Assisted Collection of Capillary BloodSchaff et al. · Diagnostics · 2025 · Open accessA vacuum-assisted upper-arm device collected a mean 538 µL and met the volume target in 85.5% of cases; 17 of 19 analytes met CLIA agreement with venous, with pain lower than fingerstick.Open-access full text (PDF)
Comparison of capillary and venous plasma lipidomes: validation of self-collected blood for plasma lipidomicsHameed et al. · J. Lipid Research · 2025 · Open accessPlasma lipidomes from self-collected upper-arm capillary blood were statistically indistinguishable from paired venous plasma (most classes r=0.95–0.99) (validating at-home capillary self-collection for lipidomics).Open-access full text (PDF)
PediatricsYourBio
Transdermal blood sampling for C-peptide is a minimally invasive, reliable alternative to venous sampling in children and adults with type 1 diabetesBesser et al. · Diabetes Care · 2024 · Open accessIn 91 children and adults, capillary C-peptide taken with the TAP device matched venous sampling with 100% sensitivity and specificity for a clinically relevant level (≥200 pmol/L; r = 0.996). 63% preferred it to a needle against 7% who preferred the needle, and same-day bruising was 5.5% versus 34.8% after a venous draw.Open-access full text (PDF)
Feasibility, acceptability and safety of a device for self-collecting capillary blood in clinical trialsDasari et al. · PLOS ONE · 2024 · Open accessIn at-home and trial settings, a wet capillary device reliably collected a median ~450 µL with a 4.4% failure rate; 88% of adults preferred self-collection over venipuncture, with lower pain.Open-access full text (PDF)
YourBio
Maximizing microsampling: measurement of comprehensive metabolic and lipid panels using a novel capillary blood collection deviceCollier et al. · The Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine · 2023 · PaywalledTAP II capillary serum (both professionally collected and self-collected) correlated with venous serum at R > 0.9 for eight analytes including ALT, AST, cholesterol, HDL and triglycerides. Creatinine correlated acceptably but carried a consistent negative bias, and carbon dioxide, potassium and albumin did not reach acceptable agreement: the useful reading is that the panel has to be validated, not the device alone.
Capillary blood stability and analytical accuracy of 12 analytes stored in MicrotainersFontaine & Saez · Practical Laboratory Medicine · 2023 · Open accessFingerstick blood self-collected into BD Microtainer tubes and posted at ambient temperature for 24 h agreed acceptably with paired serum for 11 of 12 analytes (HbA1c, lipids, creatinine, urea, urate, liver enzymes and total protein) with only AST falling outside limits.Open-access full text (PDF)
PediatricsYourBio
Durability of anti-spike antibodies in infants after maternal COVID-19 vaccination or natural infectionShook, Edlow et al. · JAMA · 2022 · Open accessThe paper records that the TAP II devices used for the infant draws were provided by YourBio Health, and that capillary serum was collected from babies as young as two months (the smallest patients sampled, without a heel prick or a venepuncture).Open-access full text (PDF)
YourBio
Remote self-collection of upper-arm capillary blood for autoantibody analysis in immune-mediated rheumatic diseasesZarbl et al. · RMD Open · 2022 · Open accessPatients self-collected upper-arm capillary blood with press-activated devices (incl. TAP II); autoantibody and CRP results agreed with venous (r≥0.98), were rated less painful, and 98.6% got enough blood within two attempts.Open-access full text (PDF)
Accuracy and tolerability of capillary self-sampling for inflammation and autoantibodies in rheumatoid arthritis: a randomized controlled trialKnitza et al. · Arthritis Research & Therapy · 2022 · Open accessCapillary self-sampling gave CRP and autoantibody values nearly identical to venous (ICC 0.97–0.998), was less painful, and the upper-arm route drew far higher acceptance and willingness to sample at home.Open-access full text (PDF)
YourBio
Quantitative metabolomics comparison of traditional blood draws and TAP capillary blood collectionCatala et al. · Metabolomics · 2018 · PaywalledMetabolomics of TAP capillary blood matched venous draws for most metabolites (amino acids, bile acids, acyl-carnitines r≥0.95); a small redox/energy subset differed with collection dynamics.

External links open an open-access full text where one exists, otherwise the publisher or PubMed record. These citations describe the published evidence for the collection formats and devices (not claims about specific Humans Nexus assays, which are validated per analyte and per laboratory).

Take the needle out of the hardest wait.

Build the monitoring your patients don’t dread (lancet-free hormone collection, self-taken at home, on a clinical-grade platform to your laboratory).

Talk to salesThe YourBio device →