BE HIPpo

First off, thank you to Julie for making the blog and clever url/heading. Because we are clearly the best bioengineering aquatic organisms, we clearly must create the best design possible for this assignment (and obviously, from the corny title of this blog post, we are also the most witty).

We are faced with a design problem: design a patient-controlled oral analgesia device to deliver oral analgesia medication rather than intravenous medication. Current patient-controlled analgesia devices, or PCAs, use pumps that infuse pain-killers into the body. This blog will focus on the progress our design team makes, the problems we encounter, and the decisions we reach.

At our first meeting, we focused on choosing a type of medication to be administered from the device. Potential forms of medication that can be ingested orally include pills (powdered tablets or liquid-filled capsules), liquid, and inhaled medications (aerosolized medicine or dry powder). We discussed the pros and cons of each (subject to further research), as follows.

Pills (powdered tablets or liquid-filled capsules):

Pros:

• easily administered in increments (each pill contains a set, equal amount of medication)
• more accurate recording of dosage delivery
• cheaper
• simpler to design (one dosage = one pill released and delivered from canister/holding container)
• more versatile (most pain medications readily available in pill/capsule form)

Cons:

• slower delivery (coating of tablet or capsule of liquid-filled pill can slow delivery)
  
• potentially bulkier (depending on size of pill)

Liquid:

Pros:

• can control increments of medication administered
• can easily manage dosage level (increase/decrease amount of medication delivered by smaller increments rather than by one entire capsule/pill)
• easy ingestion (allows for use by children who have difficulty swallowing pills or older patients who may not be able to ingest pills on their own)
  

Cons:

• slower delivery
• taste of medication
• size of device (hold medication in liquid form)
• availability of medications in liquid form

Inhaled medications (aerosolized medicine or dry powder):

Pros:

• fastest delivery (aerosol directed into lungs, absorbed into bloodstream)
• safer (faster delivery means a decreased chance for a patient to try to increase dosage because they do not feel pain relief immediately after receiving medication)
  
• easy design (canister to contain medication, same basic mechanism as metered-dose inhaler used for asthma inhalers)
• easy ingestion (can be used by children who can't swallow and older patients with no teeth/difficulty swallowing pills)
• familiar concept (metered-dose inhaler used for asthma inhalers and other respiratory disease inhalers)
• potential to design specific user interface to attach directly onto a metered-dose inhaler (such as an asthma inhaler) if a patient already has one - saves money, no need to buy another device
• less invasive
• potentially smaller device
• no waste (coat of pills/capsules)
• no taste

Cons:

• versatility (certain medication may not be able to be aerosolized effectively; do further research on this)
• potentially less accurate measurements (need to design accurate dose recording/measurement)
• may not be able to get enough of a dose into a patient's lungs with a reasonable number of administers (because of finer aerosolized/powdered medication)

Our ideal choice is to work with the third idea of building off of metered-dose inhalers, because the pros seem to outweigh the cons the most. We need to research the potential to use this design with different types of pain medications and the effectiveness of this design. If this idea can not work, we will most likely work with the second idea of liquid medication.


Just as a log to keep track of the work we divided up at this first recitation meeting:

Connie:

1. first blog post (pills vs. liquid vs. gel-filled/power-filled tablets vs. inhaler)
2. more specific specs (lock-out, total dose, dose capacity in device)
3. help Julie with medication possibilities (What can potentially be administered as a mist or liquid form? Can enough types of pain medications be effectively delivered this way?)

Julie:

1. look up information about metered-dose inhaler and potential to use this for an oral analgesia medication device
2. research potential for medication to be delivered as a mist/liquid form, effect on body, how quickly medication can be delivered and relief can be felt using these forms of delivery

David:

1. user interface (device attached to inhaler for patient interaction)
   
2. security (fingerprint login, lock-out, dose limitation)
3. more specific specs (recording of doses, dose delivery, patient use)
   

Hopefully, we will have our final detailed specifications and overall conceptual design (type of medication administered, device, user interface) finished by the next recitation meeting and will start to work around constraints and potential company requirements for a more detailed design.