Design of Medical Devices (2023)
"The T.O.D.D."
~ Designing a Medical Robot (the Tool Organisation and Delivery Device) to Assist Scrub Nurses in a Hospital Setting
Contents and Sections:
01 Design Problem - problem overview, needs criteria and design objectives
02 Technical Approach - idea generation and selection
03 T.O.D.D. Showcase - models, diagrams and technical details
Objective:
To propose a design for a new medical device.
Role in team:
Leader, Communicator, Visuals, Research
This project involved:
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Co-ordinating a team of interdisciplinary engineers.
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Identifying a gap in the market and proposing a novel solution.
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Collaborating on the final design and rendering a 3D model prototype.
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Presenting the device to industry experts.
Skills Developed:
Leadership & Team Management
Research
Collaboration
3D Modelling (Blender)
Report Construction (LaTeX)
Design Problem
In healthcare, scrub nurses play a vital role during each phase of a patient’s perioperative care (the conditions before, during and after their operation). A wide variety of duties fall under this category, most of which involve direct contact with the patients themselves, such as assisting during surgery and providing crucial information and care during the recovery phase. Despite this, insufficient funding, staff shortages, and overwhelming compensatory workloads have all contributed to an alarming disregard for scrub nurse health and safety.
A solution should aim to:​
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Allow scrub nurses to focus more on critical tasks and patient care.
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Assist scrub nurses in their duties, thereby reducing the workload.
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Lead to significant cost savings for the healthcare system.
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Improve job satisfaction among scrub nurses.
Need Statement:
"There is a need for a medical device that can assist in the fulfilment of the duties of scrub nurses in order to facilitate their reallocation to more critical tasks. This would not only alleviate their workload but also improve the quality of patient care, and lower financial costs for hospitals and the healthcare system."
Need Criteria and Design Objectives:
Using our solution aims and need statement, we developed a need criteria (shown in boxes) and design objectives (bullet points).
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Darker boxes and bullet points indicate fixed criteria and objectives. These apply to all potential ideas for devices and must be satisfied. Lighter boxes and bullet points indicate conditional criteria and objectives. These may or may not apply depending on the specific device, but must be satisfied if applicable.
Technical Approach
Considering the various roles of scrub nurses, and utilising our knowledge of existing technologies that have been developed for nursing-related activities, we were able to begin generating ideas for potential devices:
Design concept selection:
A Pugh Matrix was used to rank each of the devices by various criteria. The clear winner was 'Delivery Robot' which we proceeded to expand upon and develop.
Our end result was a Tool Organisation and Delivery Device that functioned as part of an automated System for transporting sterile tools before and after surgery.
We liked the fact that the acronym TODD also personifies each unit, which we believed would improve its reception.
The TODD: An Overview
Inter-connected unit and cabinet
Pre-programmed pathways for hospital floor map
18 hour battery life
2 motorised wheels (front) and 1 passive wheel (back)
Air-tight compartment
3 tool trays per unit
Transports tools before and after surgery
In-built tool humidifier for post-surgery
Interactive screen
Pre-programmed tool types and standard surgical procedures
TODD Prototypes:
Created in SolidWorks.
Rendered and animated in Blender.
Positive internal pressurisation
Technical Specifications:
TODD has the task of retrieving surgical trays from the cabinet and delivering them to pre-programmed locations, ie. scrub rooms. The robot and cabinet inter-connectivity communicate information such as the types of instruments allocated in each tray, the delivery destination, battery usage and levels of water and air in the delivery robot.
