Engineering Students Build Inexpensive IV Drip Controller

IV DRIP team, L-R: Thor Walker, Kamal Shah, Taylor Vaughn, and Melissa Yuan (Jeff Fitlow, Rice University)

A group of engineering undergraduate students at Rice University in Houston have built a simple device to control the flow of intravenous (IV) feeding tubes, like those used with children to treat dehydration. The students, who started the project earlier this year as freshmen, designed the IV device as part of the university’s Beyond Traditional Borders program that develops appropriate technology solutions in biotechnology meeting global health needs.

The device aims to meet a need for IVs scaled to children’s bodies, where often adult IVs are the only type available, and can work with little or no intervention, such as in medical facilities short on staff. The team of Thor Walker, Kamal Shah, Taylor Vaughn, and Melissa Yuan call their device IV DRIP for Dehydrated Relief in Pediatrics.

“The goal was to regulate the amount of fluid delivered to children so we could prevent over-hydration and under-hydration,” says Yuan. “It’s designed to be used in severely underdeveloped parts of the world, where conditions can be pretty primitive and they may not even have electricity.”

“In understaffed medical settings, monitoring IV-fluid delivery to patients can be a challenge, says Rice engineering professor Maria Oden. “At the same time, it is of critical importance that the appropriate amount of fluid is delivered.”

The device uses a lever arm with a movable counterweight similar to a physician’s scale to incrementally dispense IV fluid. As an IV bag is drained of fluid, the change in torque sets off a mousetrap-like spring that clamps the IV tube and cuts off the flow of saline solution or other prescribed fluids. Tests of the IV device show it can dispense fluid within 12 milliliters of the desired volume in increments of 50 milliliters.

The design aims for simplicity, rather than breaking new ground. The device, which costs about $20.00 to make, can be mounted on a wall or attached with clamps to a portable hospital IV pole. “There’s nothing revolutionary about this thing,” says Walker. “It was matter of determining the right weight for the steel counterweight, which is 812 grams, and calibrating everything else correctly.”

Shah and Yuan plan to take four of their prototype devices for testing this summer in Malawi and Lesotho. The following video tells more about about the device.

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