We had our oral presentation last Thursday (11/8/13) and we were glad to receive positive feedback from Dr. Walker. He strongly encouraged us to participate in National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance competition. The presentations slide can assessed at https://my.vanderbilt.edu/plateletcoolerseniordesign/2013/11/oral-presentation/

We met we our client/advisor, Dr. Booth last Friday (11/8/13) for proof of concepts. We wrote down some important points about our design:

1. Asked about plated wasted data to have stronger problem statement

• Nationwide data can be obtained from: National Blood Collection Utilization Survey

• Internal data only for presentation purpose/ not to be put online/ in a report

2. Smart cooler design cautions

• Air ventilation system: might not be need because external air can cause air contamination-platet can survived in temporary storage without air ventilation

• Compartments: Might need a third compartment to store FFP because FFP is warmed up to 37 C (20 C minimum) prior utilization

3. Proposed attachable device

• A device that can prevent the platelet bag from being used once it detects temperature below room temperature

• The device need to be attachable, hard to removed once attached, able to bend the platelet bag/collapsing tubing set to prevent people spiking into it.

• This would safety parameter of proper platelet utilization.

  Dr Booth also gave us CPDA (Citrate Phosphate Dextrose Adenine Solution) bag to design attachable device on it (figure below)

  

4. Why don’t just kept the whole blood and centrifugate them when they are needed?

• people don’t always need the whole blood. One type of blood products can be harmful to someone while others are not (risky to donate whole blood)

• need to be stored for longer times-whole blood have low shelf life

• Centrifugation can take an hour which is not feasible since time is very precious! can risk someone’s life

We also arranged some parts on our website to be more organize.