Group Members: Mark, Karishma, AJ

        Emergency rooms across America come face to face with limb amputations and cases with detached body parts caused by household accidents. While treatment of such cases has progressed due to evolving medical technology, a large factor in these cases is the handling of the detached body part from the site of the accident to the hospital. Many people are unaware of the right procedure to follow in such cases and thus, choose to ice the body part while waiting for appropriate medical care. However, this method actually damages the limb further and decreases the chances of successful reattachment. The best practice would be to first disinfect the limb and then cool it within measure, never putting it directly in contact with ice. Furthermore, when ambulances do arrive on the scene of the accident, they also lack best practices to handle the body part. Our proposed healthcare innovation is a refrigeration box that has two compartments: one to disinfect the body part and the other to keep it at an optimal temperature until appropriate medical care is available. The settings of the box would allow you to control the temperature of the box in order to adjust it for different body parts.

        Our group was inspired not only by our personal experiences with cases dealing with bad injuries, but also because we have done extensive research to come to the conclusion that the majority of everyday civilians don’t know what to do when confronted with this issue, and even worse, there hasn’t been enough developed technology to make this treatment process efficient yet safe. We also knew that the reattachment of limbs was greatly affected by the process of taking care of the severed appendages, arteries, and veins. As stated by Elana Glowatz, “No matter where surgeons attach an errant limb, the process involves restoring blood flow in the appendage by re-connecting the arteries, through which blood enters the body part, and the veins, through which it leaves.” (Glowatz 2018) Overall, we confirmed a lot about what we already knew on the background of our healthcare innovation, but also learned a lot of new interesting facts that enabled us to take into account the temperature we wanted to set inside our box, the different dimensions, as well as the different target groups we wanted to advertise too.

        With regards to the functionality of the product, as stated earlier, we plan for it to be a refrigeration cube that is divided into two sections: the disinfection side and the preservation side. The purpose of this cube is to enable the severed body part to maintain future functionality while being detached from the body. By using the refrigeration cube, there will potentially be a much higher success rate of attaching disjointed limbs, compared to the old method of separately disinfecting the body part, putting it in a bag, and then placing it on ice. Our target market for this product was originally predominantly for ambulances and hospitals. Although this is still our main avenue, we plan to market to the military as well. There are many cases of individuals losing limbs, and we believe our product will be able to help in the process of re-attaching those limbs more properly and efficiently.

        Overall, as we create 3D models of our product and do further research surrounding the technicals and necessity of this product, we are certain that we can create a useful refrigeration cube. With proper research and development, we will be able to find the ideal target market and turn our idea into a marketable, successful, and helpful product.