Optimizing medical waste management through design, implementation and assessment of a hand-held sort-it device incorporating magnetic separation technology
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Date
2022-11Author
Ssentamu, Tonny
Kiprono, Emmanuel
Asiimwe, Ambrose
Nakkazi, Catherine Diana
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This report follows the activities of team Transcend Technologies in an effort to fulfil the
requirements of the design course series for the period of 18th march 2021 to 24th September,
2022.
This report discusses the technical details of the activities carried out by the Transcend
Technologies team right from Biomedical Engineering Design I up to Biomedical Engineering
Design IV. The report is divided into ten sections: Section One – Review of Design One, Section
Two- Change of the selected problem, Section Three- Concept Generation and Selection, Section
Four- Revision of the solution, Section Five- Prototype testing, Section six- Redesign, Section
seven-market size and opportunities, Section eight- Clinical & Regulatory Process, Section nine Intellectual Property, Section ten-milestone based design, development plan and budget, Section
eleven-future prospects and conclusion.
We conducted a needs assessment field work exercise in Mulago National Referral Hospital
around March 27th, 2021, where we interacted with several medical professionals and identified
certain issues. The needs assessment study provided a clear picture of the issues confronting the
Ugandan health-care system. However, we were obliged to identify a single problem; the team
used an elimination matrix to select a primary challenge. Transcend discovered via the
requirements assessment procedure that many infections result from improper treatment of HCW
at various phases.
We discovered disturbing facts after conducting extensive desk-based investigative research on
this subject, such as "approximately 5.2 million individuals (including 4 million children) die each
year from nosocomial illnesses." Furthermore, we discovered that only 10.5% of health workers
practice adequate waste management, which can lead to major health issues for workers, the
community, and the environment. The results of the needs assessment exercise convinced us that
it was critical to address the issue at hand.
In order to shape our solution, we conducted research on current solutions and their shortcomings.
The purpose of this course series was to create a low-cost, easy-to-use device for sorting healthcare
waste. We believe that our solution, the Sort-It device, will be a major driver in limiting
transmission of infections owing to improper waste processing by reducing the contact between
the waste and the user.