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
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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.
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
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
Laura R.
Vaccine receiver in the U.S.
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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.
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Administration took about 5 mins.
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Waiting took 15 mins.
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The nurse drew up the vaccine in front of her.
With healthcare workers
Melvin
Healthcare worker in the JFK Medical Center​
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Some hospitals prepare all vaccines in syringes before mass vaccination.
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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.
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Only waited 5 minutes for both doses.
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Vaccine came ready in syringes.
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Waiting took 15 mins.
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Each syringe is labeled and administered.
Liliana
Healthcare worker in LA County
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In charge of obtaining intubation
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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.
Final solution proposal
A vaccine fountain that gets rid of the drawing doses process
Feedback from vaccination professionals
Florian Gruessing
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Founder at CareSend (vaccine service)
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PhD, Molecular Biology at Cambridge University
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“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
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Convenient to use together with the hand held part.
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Should look credible so that the patients can trust the machine.
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Should not take up too much space.
Hand-held injector
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Should be good for repetitive injection motion.
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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.
Feature #3 - Hand-held injector
Quick needle replacement mechanism
Press the top button to release the used needle.
Get a new needle.
Insert into injector by one click.
After injection, point to the disposal box to enable quick release.
The process of administrating one dose with VACCA
Insert vial and
confirm dosage.
Run the pump.
One dose is temporarily stored in the "chamber".
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2
3
The dose is pushed out by the internal mechanism.
6
Insert a new needle.
Perform injection by activating the trigger.
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5
Exploded view & Parts
Assistive digital platform
Information Architecture
Key screens
Design Evaluation
Before & After comparison
VACCA brings differences in different phases within the administration process. Click to see more details.
More efficient
3 mins per patient including check-in, preparation & administration.
Safer
Less potential human errors;
No transferring prepared syringes;
Trackable vaccine information.
More
organized
information is more organized and transparent with VACCA's digital system.