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Quantifying Maternal Blood Loss in Vaginal Birth

Progress Report 2 – November 6th, 2018

  1. Previous goals from project assignment:
    • We sought to understand more in-depth what materials would best suit our needs and how to combine the ideas we had into a cohesive trajectory for further development. We sought to gain focus on our project, shifting from divergent to convergent thinking.
  2. What we did to accomplish these goals:
    • We have met with our advisor fortnightly as well as meeting to synthesize our ideas. We have begun literature review and researching more about how different materials will accomplish the needs of the item. For example, we investigated how different color changes as a marker for a chemical reaction could be used to signal saturation. In addition, we also researched materials that could help us filter fluids to separate blood from other fluids present at birth and allow us to measure only the blood loss.
  3. What went wrong; what we need help on; what we did not accomplish:
    • No tangibles have been made for errors to occur, however, we need to expand our horizons and search more broadly in order to find more promising results. We will still need guidance finding and ordering inexpensive, preliminary biomaterials that match our specific requirements and design parameters and thus need to work with faculty here to identify who can help us obtain the necessary materials. Finally, our group did not communicate well, resulting in a few members needing to do a majority of the work.
  4. How we can fix errors; how we can accomplish unfinished goals:
    • At our next advisory meeting, seek advice from Dr. Schorn about which biomaterials to pursue that optimally addresses each of our needs as well as what other specialists may be helpful to us in obtaining our biomatierals. We will also use the library’s resources to help broaden our search for materials, as this will help us find more specialized resources for our area of study. Finally, communicating more will help delegate the work of the project evenly.
  5. Additional goals for next week; how we’re going to accomplish them:
    • We aim to gain a better idea of materials to procure after meeting with Dr. Schorn. We also hope to have narrowed down potential materials to a short list to begin preliminary chemical testing. We will also discuss with Dr. Schorn how to obtain and work with simulated blood.