Penn’s Center for Healthcare Innovation enlisted the help of a team from IPD to solve a problem: 23% of their enteral nutrition patients are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge. After hours of interviewing stakeholders and conducting research for the Center, the team clearly understood that for patients, caretakers, and nurses, preparing and administering medication is both extremely time-consuming and overly complex.

After presenting multiple concepts and prototyping the most promising ideas, the team was able to develop an idea that successfully automates and optimizes the medication crushing and administration process. This enables caretakers to crush and dilute medications correctly without creating complications and allows for more meaningful time spent between caretakers and patients.

When testing with nurses, the device cut down the process of crushing, diluting, and administering 3 medications by nearly 50%. That number gets larger as the number of medications increases. The work was well received by Penn’s Center for Healthcare Innovation who is continuing to refine the prototype with the goal of manufacturing the device.