Fiorella Palmieri
DCI / Conx file
The content of this news item has been machine translated and may contain some inaccuracies with respect to the original content published in Spanish.
In many rural areas and peripheral urban centres of Peru, far from large hospitals, there is no medical equipment to properly attend to emergencies. What is needed to bring these devices - expensive, complex, and difficult to transport - closer to the people in the most remote areas of the country? The portable and modular frame is the name of a technological development made at the PUCP that provides an effective solution to this social problem.
For its multi-purpose design to save lives, this technological innovation obtained, in May, the Utility Model Patent from Indecopi for a period of 10 years. Consuelo Cano Gallardo, lecturer at the Department of Art and Design and researcher of the groups Gidems y Girabgroups, is the inventor of the proposal.
As an industrial designer, Cano studies how users - healthcare workers, patients, family members and technicians - interact with medical equipment. The simple housing of the portable and modular frame has the capacity to carry, inside it, the components of several indispensable medical equipment.
Due to its modular assembly, this frame can transport the components of various medical equipment, such as artificial ventilation, blood transfusion machines or vital sign monitoring, among other instruments that make the difference between life and death. It can also be used to transport measuring, manufacturing, refrigeration and other equipment.
Lecturer in the Department of Art and Design
One of the possibilities of this device is to function as a pulmonary ventilator for newborns, a very vulnerable and under-served group. Peru is one of the countries in the world with the highest neonatal mortality rates.
"Mothers and families are emotionally affected by seeing their babies intubated. At the Hospital del Niño de San Borja, ventilation equipment is complex and rough to look at. This frame, which can be moved on wheels and hides the wires, is less invasive and less frightening. In remote areas, it can run on small batteries for the time needed to ventilate and stabilise a neonate. In this way, we can save valuable time in getting him or her to a hospital," she said.
"If not treated in time, the baby can arrive with irreversible lung damage or die en route. An adult with medication can hold out longer, but with a newborn this is not the case," the inventor added.
"Engineering analyses the technological factors, but with industrial design we can bring this technology closer to people. We look at other aspects, such as repair, transport, the noise generated by the equipment," said the researcher, who for this work carefully studied the technical operation of the equipment, together with a physicist and a mechatronics engineer, under the supervision of Mag. Bruno Castillón, coordinator of the Gidems Group.
"What has been patented are the solutions provided by this frame, whose portable design, with wheels and handles - with the users in mind - makes it possible to use the most necessary medical equipment in remote areas. The equipment has been designed to be more robust and durable to withstand the demands of transport. The internal components of the equipment, be it a ventilator or other, have a mechanical assembly that goes in and out of the frame for repair," Cano explained.
Its rugged exterior protects the delicate systems (electrical, pneumatic and electro-pneumatic) of a lung ventilator, and the other equipment which is modularly arranged on the inside for ease of installation and repair.
This unique prototype addresses an unmet need in our country. The possibility of its commercial development and implementation will depend on the next phase of the project: technology transfer. In this process, support and interest from public and private sectors will be sought.
For Mag. Cano Gallardo, who has been working since 2016 to develop this innovation, it is a great satisfaction to have this patent that guarantees the intellectual property.
"The background of all this research is to solve a problem with great challenges, not only from the design, but also from the engineering, the social context of the users, among others. This patent arises because no one has paid attention to this situation before. I am proud of this work that goes beyond design and presents a technological development that contributes in many ways," said the inventor, who is dedicated to optimising technologies for the benefit of society.
