The past two weeks have been all about designing and developing a low cost digital phototherapy dosing meter. A Phototherapy dosing meter is used to measure the intensity of blue light that is administered to babies that are suffering from jaundice.
At Queen Elizabeth central hospital, the biggest government hospital in Blantyre, there is a shortage of phototherapy dosing meters. The meter they are currently using was designed by Greg Nusz and Advait Kotecha in cooperation with engineering world health. Since this meter uses an analogue meter to show the reading, it suffers from calibration drift problem. This renders the meter unreliable.
Objectives:
Our main objective was to design and develop a low cost digital phototherapy dosing meter which is portable, accurate and has no calibration drift problem.
We had two prototypes that were already developed, one from rice, another from fifth year students from poly. We chose the prototype from Poly which uses an LCD to show the readings instead of an analogue meter.
Design:
We made some modifications to the Poly prototype:
- Changed the sensor.
- Modified the circuit.
- Changed the meter casing.
Progress:
Right now we are almost done with the dosing meter, the only thing which is remaining is, calibration. We are waiting for a commercial dosing meter to use as a standard meter.