Chris Holden (21), A third year design student at Northumbria University, has won a prestigious national award for medical design by redesigning the conventional needle and syringe. Chris has won the NPSA (national patient safety agency) award of £3000 and a 3 month internship at NCR financial solutions worth £4000 from the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragements of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce).
Northumbria University has filed a patent application to protect Christopher Holden's winning 'Design Directions' Medidome device. The University is currently seeking external funding to develop and commercialise the device and the fact that MediDome has received this award from the RSA underlines its potential.
Christopher consulted the Head of Clinical Governance and Risk, the Chief of Electronics and Medical Engineering, and the Head of Health and Safety Adviser (the latter also a former nurse) at the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. MediDome would also bring benefits when used in military and natural disaster situations, and mass immunisation in developing countries.
Chris's wining design "MediDome" redefines the idea of the injection. It aims to eliminate needle stick injuries and the fear of needles and injections, simplify the process and speed up patient treatment. The product's aesthetics show a softer, friendlier and less threatening form, and MediDome has a unique tester to ensure that a vein has not been ruptured during intra muscular or subcutaneous injection. A sterile cover is removed to expose adhesive, anesthetic and antiseptic wings that stick the MediDome to the required area for injection. The patented single use mechanism can never be used twice, so syringes cannot be shared, and viruses such as HIV or blood born diseases cannot be passed on.
It is made from a soft flexible plastic, pre-filled with a measured drug dose (eliminating the need for priming), all manufactured in one factory as one product, which means lower cost production. MediDome uses a universal colour coding drug system - the ring is a different colour depending on which drug is in the pre-filled reservoir. Minimal packaging reduces the product's carbon footprint, and a large label area contains all necessary information, such as drug name and dosage. The peel off adhesive cover also acts as a tamper alarm - it changes colour if the product has been ruptured or tampered with. A companion product, the Absorption MediDome, works in the same way for drugs such as painkillers and certain antibiotics but without the needle. During his research,