Product Vision

Main idea: A device to maintain healthy blood oxygenation levels in a patient while in transport.

Purpose for Creating the Product

It aligns with the team’s purpose to develop sustainable solutions relating to environmental and humanitarian causes. In trying to tackle this issue, our team will be able to showcase their expertise while being fueled by our collective passions and motivation.

Currently, there exist manual ventilating systems that may be administered by paramedics or relatives accompanying patients to maintain blood oxygenation levels; while being transported from semi-rural locations lacking appropriate medical facilities, to the ones equipped with vacant ICUs on an ambulance; after suffering from mild hypoxia stemming from breathing difficulties. A recent research done by the NCBI (in the U.S.A) concluded that the rate of equipment-related mishaps may be as high as one-third of all transports[4].

We as a team would like to create a product that will aid in giving travelling patients a better chance at surviving these journeys even in the absence of assistive medical personnel on board. Developing an automated version of the pre-existing and readily available manual ventilating system, along with added assistive features can potentially be an exceptional solution. This approach was derived by extensive communication with stakeholders.

Target Group

Our target group consists of communities in the state of Gujarat, India. Gujarat is a diverse state that has a good blend of rural, urban and semi-urban communities. Gujarat has a lot of smaller medical facilities within close vicinity of larger highly equipped medical establishments.This proximity can be leveraged to ensure our proposed solution is functionally sound for shorter travel times(approx 1 to 2 hours). In addition to the aforementioned, the majority of the stakeholders practice medicine in or or hail from the state.

Problem solved by the Product

Often times, smaller medical centres find themselves understaffed and lacking sophisticated technologies. As a result patients coming-in with blood-oxygen saturation levels under or close to 90%, on experiencing different levels of hypoxia (which could be caused by various lung infections, breathing disorders, unconsciousness or trauma) need to be transferred to locations that have intensive care units.

Normally, under such circumstances, the patient is intubated and the endotracheal tube is connected to an ambulated manual breathing unit (AMBU). This is connected to a pressurized oxygen tank, and a blood oximeter (attached to the patient’s finger), which measure the oxygen saturation and pulse rates respectively. The AMBU bag needs to be manually pumped at a rate of 12-16 breaths/minute to maintain healthy blood-oxygen saturation level until they can be shifted to an assistive ventilator[2].

Moreover, due to uneven terrain, bad weather conditions or other reasons the ambulance could jolt which could lead to loose connectivity between different components thereby destabilizing the patient. According to the US national library of medicine in around 125 transports of ventilated and non ventilated patients reported, 34% of cases were related to disconnection of various equipment[4].

Tackling multiple problems simultaneously could fatigue and exhaust the administrator, making them prone to mistakes. Furthermore, trained paramedics may not be available to accompany the patient in the ambulance, which may force untrained relatives of the patient to take on the responsibility of manually pumping the AMBU.

Considering the aforementioned challenges, our proposed solution can help free up paramedics and prevent scenarios where untrained relatives have vast responsibilities thrust upon them.

Product description, uniqueness, feasibility

Unifying these scenarios and extensive discussions with stakeholders, we propose possible avenues for optimizing the AMBU bag. Firstly, we wish to automate the manual pumping mechanism such that the pump rate is maintained without the need of constant human supervision. Secondly, we aim to equip this automated AMBU bag with alarms that signify oxygen leakage, assisting trained/untrained help in identifying the source.

As mentioned previously, the existing product is manually operated and no provision for technology that assists in discovering the leakage origins exist currently.

Product Societal Benefits

We created this video, to answer the above question.

References

  1. Atlassian. “Agile Retrospectives: Use the Past to Define the Future”. Atlassian, 2020, www.atlassian.com/agile/scrum/retrospectives.
  2. “Hypoxemia (Low Blood Oxygen).” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 1 Dec. 2018, www.mayoclinic.org/symptoms/hypoxemia/basics/definition/sym-20050930.
  3. “Sprint eview vs Sprint Retrospective.” Infinity, 2020, startinfinity.com/product-management-framework/scrum-sprint/sprint-review-vs-sprint-retrospective.
  4. Waydhas, Christian. “Equipment Review: Intrahospital Transport of Critically Ill Patients.” NLMNIHDHHSUSA.gov National Center for Biotechnology Information, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC137237/.

Stakeholders Interviewees: