If a medical professional has ever had a hard time getting a needle into your veins, you'll welcome this new gizmo from Adison Technology. By effectively turning your skin transparent, it makes needle sticks more accurate and therefore less painful.
Blood draws are often one of the first tests a doctor will order when trying to evaluate a patient's health. And for patients in the hospital, peripheral venous catheters, often known as an IV, is the most commonly used invasive medical device in health care.
Both of these procedures rely on medical personnel being able to insert a needle in a vein. While this is a fairly straightforward procedure for those with veins that are visible through their skin, it is a bit more complicated when veins are hard to find. What's more, inserting needles into the veins of infants is extra difficult because of the thick layer of fat that hides them from view.
Enter the Adison Vein Locator.
This portable device invented by a Taiwanese medical technology company uses a proprietary optical technology to effectively see through the skin on the top of your hand to reveal the veins and arteries beneath it in three dimensions. This allows medical professionals to find exactly the blood vessel they need – regardless of the depth – to carry out potentially life-saving procedures.
It is equipped with a tilt-able display screen to show the landscape of veins so that multiple people can view it at once, and a medical professional can look back and forth between the screen and the needle itself to make sure it is inserted accurately. The screen can also be pivoted to accommodate someone who might be in a kneeling position, working on a patient who is on the ground.
The vein locator has been proven effective even in infants as young as six months old, and testing showed that the device improved the IV one-time success rate by 30%. It can also work with any skin color as well as with skin that has suffered scaring from burns.
Last year, Adison's device won a RedDot design award, one of the largest product design competitions in the world. The device is currently being exhibited at the InnoTech conference being held this week in Taipei, Taiwan, where New Atlas' own Bronwyn Thompson tried it out and was quite impressed by the quality and resolution of the device.