By Monica Mursch, The Daily
A team from Bioengineers Without Borders (BWB) is building a low-cost anesthesia delivery device for use in low-resource settings. BWB is a student organization at the University of Washington that focuses on creating medical technologies for places that may not have access to quality health care resources. BWB focuses on creating low-cost, quality medical equipment while also learning skills useful to bioengineering and related career fields. The teams that comprise BWB consist of many bioenginnering (BIOE) majors or intended majors, but is home to members from other fields as well.
PhD students David Peeler and Eric Swanson have been leading a team to create the anesthetic device. The difference between this medical technology and others available is its portability, which allows doctors to carry it with them for surgery, making it ideal for low-resource settings. Although there are other portable anesthetic devices available, many are not of good quality and can make it a challenge for doctors to apply the accurate doses they need.
Anthony Roche, Adjunct Associate Professor of Global Health and Professor of Anesthesiology, helped advise the team.