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Chuck Ember thought there must be a better way to find veins. He had watched his unconscious father jerk when nurses poked a needle deep into his arm while he lay in a Fort Wayne hospital in 1985.
Ember vowed he would invent a method to find veins and arteries that didn't rely on calling two nurses, one to hold a patient's arm and the other to push the needle.
In short order, in 1986, he created an ultrasound device that senses blood flowing through veins and arteries. It doesn't penetrate the skin, but detects the flow of blood and allows the user to hear the flow.
But technology to reduce the device to a convenient size didn't become available until recently.
Now, Ember can squeeze the equipment into the size of a large ballpoint pen, and in May he received a patent for making the technology portable, self-contained and battery-operated.
"The problem was how to get ultrasound small enough so people would carry it with them and not roll it on a cart," he said. "We made it so you could carry it around in your shirt pocket all day."
Other inventions have...