Giving healthcare providers the help they need.
My senior design team designed and built a device that automatically stops an intravenous infusion at a preset time, preventing serious complications from medication overdosing. The device also performs volumetric calculations and alerts the healthcare provider when the infusion is over.
Low-resource communities don’t have the medical devices they need.
IV infusions are the most common medical procedure worldwide. Across Africa, there is a 57% medication error rate. 36% of those errors are due to medications being given at or for the wrong time. Of these “wrong time” errors, the most serious outcomes generally come from medications administered intravenously. In particular, overdosing is the leading cause of death by medication error.
Concurrently, hospitals and clinics in low resource settings are often understaffed and under-equipped. This leads to worse patient care – in particular, nurses don’t have the time or capacity to make sure that the correct fluid volume has been administered in an infusion.
We have a small way to help.
Thus, there is a need for a reusable device that adds safety features to IV infusions at a low-cost.
My design project was to create and build an electromechanical device that controls the volume in IV infusions. The current prototype sets off an alarm when an infusion is done and uses a servo motor to trigger a piston that stops an infusion instantly.
See it in action above.