Inside a peculiar printer, acoustic pulses shoot through a blood sample of an ailing patient, pushing individual blood droplets onto a piece of paper. Among the tens of millions of droplets in the final print, only a few matter. Those are the ones that contain bacteria that could threaten the life of that patient.

This bio-printer is being developed by a Stanford University team that pulls together expertise from the schools of Engineering, Medicine, Humanities and Sciences and Business. Paired with an advanced way of scanning and identifying bacteria – which the group is also developing – this technology could speed diagnosis of bacterial blood infections and reduce the use of ineffective antibiotics.