Project team: Asher Saghian, Patrick Thelen
Project background: Winner of the OSAA Medtech Collider, fall 2016
The winner of the OSAA Medtech Collider (run by the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology and the Jacobs Institute in partnership with OSAA Innovation), IV-GO aims to increase patient mobility in rural and lower-income settings. The Collider challenged students to build on a concept for a mobile drop box that would deliver fluids and medications without the need for a bulky IV pole, allowing patients to move freely while receiving IV treatments. In addition to developing a prototype, each student team also developed a business analysis over the course of the semester, considering where their prototypes might be applied. Drawing from research and previous experiences, the IV-GO team focused their work on lower-income contexts in India, where nurses often care for many patients at a time and lengthy hospital stays can lead to infections or other issues.
In their prototyping process, they emphasized a human-centered approach, hoping to create a design that would help patients return home quickly and safely. This led to the development of a case that could contain an IV bag and delivery mechanism and could be worn with a simple strap. The case’s easy-to-use design, which involves minimal installation process, was rooted in considerations of nurses’ needs, while considering patient perspectives led them to emphasize elegance and comfort in their design. To make the device accessible to hospitals in rural and lower-income regions, they have prototyped IV-GO with cost in mind, projecting a cost a fraction of that of an IV pole.
Want to learn more about IV-GO and its designers? Check out:
“Teams compete for winning IV bag and infusion design in OSAA Collider finals,” Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology
Topics: Health