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Quantifying Maternal Blood Loss in Vaginal Birth

Progress Report 1 – November 2nd, 2018

  1. Previous goals from project assignment:
    • We aim to create an absorptive pad that absorbs blood and can quantify the blood lost during vaginal child births at an accuracy level helpful enough to aid healthcare professionals provide care to the mother. Our device will be ergonomic, account for other fluids, and be low cost. This design remains non-invasive, but also alerts healthcare providers about potentially dangerous levels of blood loss.
  2. What we did to accomplish these goals:
    • We have met with our advisor fortnightly to brainstorm new ideas or improvements to our current absorptive pad model, while meeting on our own in between such sessions. We also spectated hospital environment, specifically the labor ward. There, we learned the various, typical orientation of mothers giving birth. Individually, we brainstormed specific needs our biomaterial would need to have. As a team, we shared and built upon each others’ ideas to synthesize a comprehensive model of our project design.
  3. What went wrong; what we need help on; what we did not accomplish:
    • No tangibles have been made for errors to occur; however, this is why we strive to create one within the next two weeks. We will need guidance finding and ordering inexpensive, preliminary biomaterials that match our specific requirements and design parameters. Moreover, we are lacking current models within the problem of interest to study and improve our model off of. It would be helpful to observe cases of interest within the hospitals or perhaps recordings of hemorrhages during birth to garner additional viewpoints and insights. We have not recently thought about future, downstream needs of our application.
  4. How we can fix errors; how we can accomplish unfinished goals:
    • At our next advisory meeting, seek advice from experts about which biomaterials to pursue that optimally addresses each of our needs. We will then order preliminary materials to work with over the next week. Further, we wish to obtain a kanga to study current models of quantifying blood loss, in efforts of emulating them. We will also delegate members who are free to observe relevant hospital cases to gain insights. Further, we will begin brainstorming ideas of integrating our material to the hospital system at our next meeting.
  5. Additional goals for next week; how we’re going to accomplish them:
    • We aim to gain a better idea of materials to procure to begin the development of our product. We will have more frequent meetings to discuss our project and possibly consult Dr. Walker to streamline our project design. We also will contact professionals, as suggested by our advisor, for additional advice on how to pursue our project.