Vacca

-A more efficient, safer and more organized vaccine administration solution

My Role

This is an individual project.

Time

12 weeks

Keywords

Healthcare

Research

Form development

System design

Problem

Vaccine rollout

The rollout efficiency of vaccines has not been satisfying in COVID-19 and previous pandemics, such as the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. Pandemic vaccine rollout will continue to be a problem if no changes are made to the process.

disney-vaccine-line-210_hpEmbed_20210113

Design Goal

To make vaccine administration process more efficient, safer and more organized, especially during future pandemics.

Scope

The Vacca vaccine solution focuses mainly on the administration phase of vaccination.

Research

Dive into vaccination topic and understand different aspects of the problem through primary and secondary research.

Historical view

Analysis of vaccine administration procedure

In clinics

Administration of vaccine flow chart_wit

The average time per patient is 10-15 minutes.

More than half of the steps are done manually by nurses.

Information documentation is not efficient.

In vaccine centers

In vaccine centers, doses are usually prepared in advance in a designated area and dispatched to each injection station.

Contamination can take place when a dose is transferred manually.

Information tracking becomes even harder

Potential for cross infection is higher.

Single-dose-vial vs Multi-dose-vial

What does being MDV mean to pandemic vaccines?

More efficient transportation, manufacture and storage.

Better for vaccine that requires cold chain transportation.

Potential contamination especially when no conservatives are added into the vaccine substances.

Shelf time causes potential vaccine waste.

Time per patient is longer because doses are not pre-filled.

Interviews

With patients

Screen Shot 2021-01-28 at 10.21.23 AM.pn

Laura R.

Vaccine receiver in the U.S.

Waited 1 hour in car and 1 hour in line before getting the vaccine. The hour waiting in line is not as comfortable because it is in door.
Administration took about 5 mins.
Waiting took 15 mins.
The nurse drew up the vaccine in front of her.

With healthcare workers

Screen Shot 2021-01-28 at 10.20.17 AM.pn

Melvin

Healthcare worker in the JFK Medical Center

Some hospitals prepare all vaccines in syringes before mass vaccination.
All syringes therefore need to be labeled and re-checked before given to patients. (Syringes must be labeled unless given straight to the patient)

Barry K.

Vaccine receiver in the China.

Only waited 5 minutes for both doses.
Vaccine came ready in syringes.
Waiting took 15 mins.
Each syringe is labeled and administered.

Screen Shot 2021-02-01 at 9.46.56 AM.png

Liliana

Healthcare worker in LA County

In charge of obtaining intubation
Not trained to administer vaccines, because she has been kept in ICU ever since COVID happened..

The waiting process can be long and can potentially expose patients to cross injections.

Staff shortage is a big issue once vaccine supply become sufficient.

Insights & Design opportunities

Staff Shortage

As lack of personnels remains a big issue, a less labor-intensive, more efficient administration process is needed.

Manual Steps

How might we reduce steps that require manual operations to make it more efficient and less susceptible to human errors?

SDV vs MDV

How might we combine the advantages of both single-dose-vial and multi-dose-vial?

Design criteria

Ideation

Find the solution through extensive ideation, prototyping and iterations.

See the full ideation, prototyping and concept selecting process.

See full process

Final solution proposal

A vaccine fountain that gets rid of the drawing doses process

Feedback from vaccination professionals

Florian Gruessing

Founder at CareSend (vaccine service)
PhD, Molecular Biology at Cambridge University

“The most important aspect you need to work on is the prevention of possible cross infections.”

"There is definitely great potential in this idea."

“But you have to make sure that the the patient who gets the 50th dose is still safe 100%.”

Design Development

Further develop the concept to make it an viable and feasible real-world product solution.

User scenario

Walk through the experience and steps for both parties to inform the form design and systematic design.

Patients

Healthcare workers

Form design

Main machine body

Convenient to use together with the hand held part.
Should look credible so that the patients can trust the machine.
Should not take up too much space.

Hand-held injector

Should be good for repetitive injection motion.
Should not be visually intimidating to the patients.

Final Design

System diagram

Feature #1 -Super vials that contains 150 doses

The new super vials help eliminate the drawing up dose process, therefore drastically speed up the process.

How do the super vials work?

Insert a vial into the machine and the vial will be recognized by the machine. (*The orange part indicates a built-in silicone stopper that seals the doses.)

Run the pump to force the silicone stopper open and start transmitting doses.

When a vial is used up, simply pop it out by pushing on the end of the vial.

Feature #2 - Built-in back-flow preventing mechanisms

As eliminating possibility of cross-injection is crucial to the solution, there are several back-flow preventions in palce.

The peristaltic pump creates positive pressure and makes sure that the doses can only flow in one direction.

There is a U-shaper channel in the hand-held component before the dose get into the arm, so that the liquid can not flow back to the rest of the doses even when the machine is not running.