Future of Engineering

ICU Medical in San Clemente has a new mission – to put an end to miscarriages that affect many nurses who become pregnant while working in cancer wards. The cause of those heart-wrenching events is the harsh chemicals used to treat cancer patients. Nurses come into contact with that chemotherapy medication if it splashes out of a storage vial or leaks while a nurse is setting up an intravenous line

Spiros lets nurses remove a drug from a vial without sucking it through a needle into a syringe and then lets them inject the liquid into a properly equipped IV tube. The Spiros connector shuts off the flow of liquid whenever it is disconnected, so drips and spills are a thing of the past, ICU says. It is the latest in a series of Lopez inventions that include the Click Lock, a secure connection he devised after a patient died when an IV was accidentally detached, and the Clave, a needle-free connection between syringes and IV lines.Design engineer Tom Fangrow came up with the idea for Genie, a specialized attachment that eliminates the need for nurses to puncture a vial lid with a needle, which risks a spill or a splash of chemicals

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Labels: Bio-engineering, Safety