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VeinGuard is a medical device for hemodialysis patients who have arteriovenous fistulas (AV fistulas). This device non-invasively monitors the development of blood flow and detect signs of stenosis (vessel thinning) in the hospital environment.
TIMELINE
TEAM
TOOLKIT
SKILLS
The right of
passage...
A huge component of being an engineering student is creating a design project in your 4th and final year. Myself along with 3 other students in my class decided to build a medical device for patients on hemodialysis. We realized there were many pain points for patients in this space as we dove deep into our research and were drawn to the idea of potentially helping out 3M+ people who are put on dialysis across the world.
A little bit of context...
What is hemodialysis and stenosis?
Life sustaining procedure for kidney failure patients
Patients undergo surgery to create an entry site near the wrist for treatment
Stenosis is a major complication of treatment where your vessels start to thin
Stenosis can affect the entry site and patients might require a new surgery. Over 78% of all hemodialysis surgical grafts fail due to stenosis.
The deep dive
We conducted through research by reading literature available on this topic and started looking for potential ways to solve the problem.
Building V1 of the prototype
I created a small wearable device for the patient which container a light sensor placed on top of the surgical entry site (where the patient would receive their treatment). The goal of the ppg sensors was to use light refraction to detect the blood flow close to the surgical site and determine an effective method by which we could determine if an individual had stenosis.
Winning the Velocity AgeTech Challenge
I pitched VeinGuard at the Velocity AgeTech challenge highlighting its benefits to the elder population. I learned how to deliver a powerful 3 minute pitch and convey the product in such a short time frame. Our group won the top 3 prizes out of 25+ teams participating and received $5000 in grant funding to continue working on the project after the challenge.
Chatting with
professionals
We spoke with several professionals in the field to validate our approach and problem space. We spoke with nephrologists (kidney specialists), founders of several medical device companies as well as the director of the dialysis ward at Grand river hospital.
Building V2 of the prototype
After speaking with several individuals in the field, we created an improved version of VeinGuard. We noticed that our approach of using ppg sensors wasn’t producing accurate results so we did more research and found promising evidence in using contact microphones to measure blood flow instead.
Our final prototype is fully functional and displays the following biometrics about a patient when they wear the prototype. Through continued iteration we were able to design an end to end project which has tremendous potential for hemodialysis patients.
My Learnings
With VeinGuard, my biggest learning was the power of iteration. We started the project from one idea and by then it had evolved into something completely different in terms of design and engineering.
Creating a project from scratch took a lot of resilience and figuring things out as we went. I had the chance to implement hardware and mechanical design skill by building a CAD of the wearable as well as the PCB (printed circuit board) that contained all the circuitry.
Interested in working together? Lets talk :)
