Design and Prototyping of a New Device for Supplying Oxygen and other Pharmaceuticals to Newborn Babies

More than fifteen million premature babies are born each year in the whole world. In order to guarantee a proper maturation and development process, most of those cases require the use of oxygen therapy techniques because of the immature status of their respiratory system. Besides that, respiratory illnesses are one of the main causes of death in babies/children between zero and two years old. As a consequence, the use of devices for supplying oxygen and other pharmaceuticals affects especially to those patients, because in most cases those devices are not adapted to their physiognomy. Thus, their use might cause issues such as pressure ulcers, oxygen leaks, and impossibility to access specific face areas, besides complicating the placement and manipulation of the devices themselves. In order to ease those issues, this work addresses the conception and design of a new device that provides a feasible solution to the problem described. Starting with a detailed analysis of the users' needs, from which the corresponding collection of technical specification of the requirements is built, a viable three-dimensional model for the product is defined in detail. Such model will be materialized by means of additive manufacturing, aiming to its further testing by control groups.