According to Bench to Bedside Competition student director Matt Sorenson, a panel of about 20 judges comprised of faculty from the university’s engineering, business, and medical schools selected the team’s inhaler design from a field of 15 entries. The inhaler team’s presentation was the most polished, Sorenson noted, saying that, “They really have a fire that is contagious.”
Since the competition, Ciancone has graduated, allowing him to work full time to pursue patents, regulatory approval, and financing for commercialization of the device, while the remaining team members contribute as much time as they can until they complete their degrees.
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In the UK, the “Mobile Medicine” division of the RSA Student Design Awards, organized by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce and sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline elicited a submission from a Coventry University design student named Becky Morley for a dry powder inhaler. Although Morley’s design was not shortlisted this year, according to the RSA’s Sevra Davis, another inhaler design by James Ravenhall of Northumbria University did make the shortlist in 2010.
DPI design by Becky Morley for the RSA competition
Morley maintained a blog detailing her inhaler design project and her placement at the university’s Health Design & Technology Institute. Her inhaler is designed for use by elderly patients who have arthritis and therefore have difficulty holding and activating devices. The dry powder inhaler is in the shape of an easy-to-grip plastic sphere, about the size of a tennis ball, with a mouthpiece that extends out on one side.
Although the inhaler, called “Breathe-Easy,” obviously will not fit in a pocket, the submission notes that it “will look less like an inhaler for people who feel embarrassed about using an inhaler in public.”
Poster showing how to use the "Breathe-Easy" device
Morley says that she chose to submit an inhaler design for the RSA competition after doing some research and discovering the high percentage of patients, especially the elderly, who have difficulty using inhalers properly. She decided to take advantage of what looked like “a great opportunity to design a totally new inhaler that looked nicer and was easier to use.”
“When I first started my inhaler design process,” she notes, “I didn’t realize how many factors needed to be taken into consideration until I came upon them when researching other types of inhalers.” Initially, she researched regulations on aerosols, sizes, and medications, plus ergonomic and anthropometric data. Although she would have liked to have held focus groups, she was unable to do so.
However, she consulted a number of sources, including references she was able to obtain from the library, such as The ABC of Asthma, Respiratory Care, and the Oxford Handbook of Respiratory Nursing. Originally, she intended to design an MDI but after contacting the British Aerosol Manufacturers Association (BAMA), she discovered that it would be impossible to manufacture aerosol canisters in the shape she wanted; so she redirected her efforts toward designing a DPI.
