Comfortably Numb: Device Makes Injections Less Painful

A Rice University engineering student team called 'Comfortably Numb' has created a device to ease the pain of an injection. Their device numbs the skin prior to a shot by producing a rapid chemical reaction to cool the patient's skin. The team currently has a functioning prototype that has shown to produce a measurable numbing effect in 60 seconds. The lab device is 3D-printed and consists of two sealed chambers containing the chemical ammonium nitrate and water. A simple twisting motion moves the chambers into alignment to allow the chemicals to flow through the chamber to produce a rapid endothermic reaction.

Transcript

00:00:00 [Music] we are a freshman engineering design team our name is Comfortably Numb and the story behind that is that we are tasked with numbing the skin immediately before an injection and we are all fans of classic rock music so that's where that comes from we are targeting anyone who has to get an injection which is nearly everyone but the device is

00:00:26 especially applicable to people who are susceptible more susceptible to pain so the elderly or children or during procedures where you have to get shots in more sensitive areas of the body so the face are the groin the key to our device is this commercially available instant cold pack inside of this cold pack uh is ammonium nitrate and water and when you crush it the ammonium

00:00:50 nitrate mixes with the water and creates an endothermic reaction which cools a solution down the same kind of reaction is in our device there are two Chambers which are held separate in the Clos position in the uh top chamber is water and the in bottom chamber is ammonium nitrate so in this position it's held separate and no reaction happens and then when you

00:01:09 twist it the water flows into the modium nitrate and it creates this endothermic reaction that's in the cold packs and makes it really cold at that point you check it up to make sure everything's mixed and you place it on the skin and the cooling sensation is transferred to the metal cap here and it makes your skin cold which makes it more numb and you will feel less pain from the

00:01:28 injection the reason we don't just use one of these is our device will eventually be integrated with the uh cap of a needle so that the nurse or doctor will get the like the needle cap and our device kind of in one assembly we wanted something that was uh very time efficient so and we found that cold was the most time efficient rather than the spray on and creams and that

00:01:58 our device would take around 20 to 30 seconds to start working and in costliness we found that the uh actually the creams and these sprays cost a lot of money while our device will be around $2 so with our solution the problem will be solved more effectively efficiently and through more integration