Industrial Design Students Create Safer IVs

Teams of graduate and undergraduate Industrial Design students recently presented their healthcare design work with JeffSolves.

Working together with doctors, caregivers and medical students, they undertook a project to address bloodstream infections due to IVs. Called CLABSIs, these infections cause thousands of deaths each year. Through a semester-long process of research, design and development the team created Conexo, a two-piece IV line guard system that guides alignment while minimizing exposure and contamination.

JeffSolves is a university design initiative that brings together students and faculty from across the Jefferson community to generate innovative approaches to problems that lack effective treatments. It’s just one of the unique opportunities that Jefferson Industrial Design offers students to put what they’ve learned in the studio into practice in the real world. Director of the Industrial Design program Tod Corlett says, “We teach our students how to work in a truly interdisciplinary way. They collaborate with a broad range of professionals to address important real-world problems. Projects like JeffSolves also give them the opportunity to learn firsthand from industry leaders about pivotal design issues like business models and intellectual property. It’s an experience that only Jefferson offers.”