ABOUT

Dawn facilitates a safer way to load, track and dispense medication to patients. Patient prescription information is provided through an intuitive bluetooth low energy platform, resulting in an easier administration procedure and enhanced patient safety.

The problem that drove the project was brought to my attention when a family member (staff nurse) came home one evening in tears, after wrongly administering drugs to a patient which subsequently made them ill. It was this insight in particular that was alarming to me as I questioned how such serious errors could occur within hospitals, an environment in which you would expect to receive a particularly high level of care. Consequently, after speaking to numerous nurses and healthcare professionals I realised the high frequency of this occurrence and decided to base my project around this important, yet inconspicuous issue.

The design process was heavily influenced by the primary research I carried out throughout the project. Understanding nurses latent and explicit needs enabled me to prioritise particular factors I would have to consider in order to produce a solution to the problem. This enabled me to have a clear sense of the products specification throughout the conceptual stages when dictating the designs form and function. Factors that had to be heavily considered at this stage were: a systematic way of loading, tracking and dispensing medication from the unit, ease of cleaning and manoeuvrability.

This was furthered throughout making prototypes and testing them within the clinical environment, where having access to liaise with healthcare professionals meant I could identify and resolve design issues fast. I worked with Fujitsu to produce the interface of which would display patients information relative of their prescription, this worked in conjunction with BLE beacon modules mimicking nurse and patient wristbands. The 1:1 scale working prototype displayed both the patient specific storage and interface features of the design, this when reviewed by staff nurses received positive reviews and appeared to meet specification points that were outlined in the early stages of the process.