Physical Product · 2020
Neonatal Epinephrine Dosing
Epinephrine is currently packaged and sold exclusively for adult use, requiring nurses to manually calculate and administer adjusted doses for pediatric patients in high-pressure, life-saving situations.
- Stanford Medicine | Palo Alto, CA | Stanford Medicine-Funded | 2020
Problem
Epinephrine is currently packaged and sold exclusively for adult use, requiring nurses to manually calculate and administer adjusted doses for pediatric patients in high-pressure, life-saving situations. This process involves multiple steps, and the lack of routine practice often leads to errors or delays in dosing, which can jeopardize patient outcomes.
Current epinephrine dosing time for neonates takes too long. Best case scenario is 1 full minute.
Solution
We developed a novel way to package epinephrine for neonates that eliminates dose-prep time: prefilled syringes, specified by weight, ready to administer immediately.
Research & Discovery
Timely, accurate epinephrine administration is lifesaving for bradycardic newborns, yet the conventional preparation process is slow and error-prone. For other emergency drugs, prefilled syringes have been shown to reduce both errors and administration time, pointing to the same opportunity for neonatal epinephrine.
Design & Testing
We designed prefilled epinephrine syringes specified for the patient’s weight and route of administration, then tested them against conventional epinephrine in simulated neonatal resuscitations with 21 NICU nurses at Stanford’s CAPE lab. Preparation dropped from a median of 48 seconds to 17 and administration from 58 to 27, and every nurse supported adopting the prefilled design.
Team
PI: Neonatologist William Rhine, MD
Design Team: Jules P Sherman, MFA, Janene Fuerch, MD, William Rhine, MD
Published in the American Journal of Perinatology (2024).
