Visually impaired patients with diabetes have difficulty withdrawing accurate doses of insulin. For this reason, The Penn State Institute for Diabetes and Obesity, and Team Accuracy propose to collaboratively design a device that reliably withdraws doses while ridding the syringe of air bubbles. Diabetes occurs when the body doesn’t produce or properly use insulin. Insulin is a very important hormone that converts various foods, sugars and starches into energy that the body needs to function properly.
Courtesy of http://health.howstuffworks.com/diabetes-complications-ga2.htm.
There are several devices that currently exist to ensure that visually impaired diabetes patients receive an accurate dose of insulin, but they do not account for air bubbles in the syringe. The two main goals for designing this device are to accurately withdraw the correct dose, and detect air bubbles easily and quickly. Our primary design objectives are to complete the device design, to build and test the scale model(s), and to build and present the final working device. For this design process, Team Accuracy will be following a general model of engineering design.
Our primary design is a platform that holds both the syringe and insulin vial. An adjustable sliding stopper allows the patient to withdraw insulin to a pre-calibrated dosage and see the set dose on a digital screen. After the proper dose is withdrawn, the patient can remove the syringe and inject it normally. The device is relatively inexpensive, portable, and reusable.
Final Constructed Prototype of DIGI-Dose device.
