The Penn State Institute for Diabetes and Obesity (PSIDO) is a group of scientists, medical experts, and engineers all working to improve the lives of those suffering from diabetes. They do this through state of the art patient care, medical research, and advancements in technology and education for diabetes. In the general sense, diabetes is a metabolic disease in which the body cannot properly produce insulin or effectively use the insulin the body creates, American Diabetes Association [1]. It occurs on a large age range spectrum and is a global problem affecting individuals of all races. With proper insulin injections and medical care, this disease is treatable. The goal of the PSIDO is to make the treatments for all those suffering from this disease better and easier to administer.

One particular area that concerns the PSIDO is the necessity for diabetic patients to rotate their insulin injection sites. The injections must be placed in areas of fatty tissues, and in some slender or elderly patients, these areas are either hard to find or hard to reach. The sites must be rotated to prevent lumps from forming that interfere with insulin absorption by the body. To increase the amount of injection sites available to the diabetic patient the PSIDO requested a non-traditional site injection aid to be designed by our design team, Team Quattro. This device must help the patient safely self-inject insulin on their backside where they can neither see nor reach. To successfully achieve our design goals, we considered cost, feasibility, ease of use for the patient, and manufacturability. The final design consists of a linear actuator motor powered injection device that is strapped onto the patient by a Velcro waistband. Aluminum is used to secure an insulin pen to the device. Our final design testing confirmed proper prototype functioning and safe patient injection. The information that follows will present the design, manufacturing and testing of the device in greater detail.

(1) The device must extend the reach of the patient in a user friendly manner.

(2) The device must securely administer needle insertion, insulin injection, and needle removal.

(3) The device should have the ability to be used for multiple injection sites.

(4) The concept should be designed in a cost-effective manner