🏆 Best Project 1st Place
This project creates a remote-controlled IV system that lets nurses adjust IV lines without entering the patient’s room to reduce the risk of infections and make IV line control easier and cheaper, using a simple user interface and costing much less than traditional systems.
Sponsored by: Dr. Vinciya Pandian
Team Members
Rithvik Shetty Nathaniel Smith Owen Hall Keerthana Mahesh Shobana Shikha Bhattacharjee
Instructor(s): Kyusun Choi
Project Poster
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Project Video
Project Summary
Overview
One of the most essential items that any hospital must have is intravenous (IV) lines. Nurses use these devices to deliver essential fluids and medication to a patient’s bloodstream. However, nurses must enter the patient’s room when changing dosages or medications, often bringing outside bacteria in contact with the injection site leading to infection. Nearly 30,000 people die annually from central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI), and so a solution must be found to help reduce direct contact between nurses and patients undergoing IV treatment.
Objectives
To solve this issue, our team worked to create a remote-operated IV injection system, allowing a nurse to remotely control multiple IV lines, independently controlling their flow rate without the need to enter the patient’s room.
Approach
● As a team, we visited the Hershey Medical Center to better understand how IV injection systems such as the Alaris IV pump module typically work.
● We then brainstormed different ways we could implement such a system to be remote-controlled and decided on controlling our liquid flow by pressing into an IV tube.
● To accomplish this we made use of servo motors that could generate 20kg of force.
● We then made use of an ESP32 microcontroller to run the servo motors.
● We created a GUI program and built a portable control terminal to run it.
● Next, we used a Raspberry Pi to generate a local network for our system to connect to, allowing our control terminal to communicate with our IV line control system.
● We 3D printed a case to enclose the Pi and made an enclosed project box to set up our IV tube control system inside.
Outcomes
● Our prototype shows the usefulness of a remote-controlled IV line control system, and how it could be used to replace existing IV line control systems.
● Easy-to-use user interface allowing nurses to easily control IV lines.
● The product is a great deal cheaper than typical IV line control systems as it has a manufacturing cost of roughly $40 versus an Alaris Medley Infusion Pump’s $3,600.