Velox Health

Inspiration

As 500,000 refugees and migrants head toward Europe, the need to identify and quickly separate refugees by medical information can help ease the burden on first responders and stop preventable deaths.

What it does

The Velox Wristband is a low cost identification band that provides a visual and digital means to communicate patient data. Refugees at camps that know about their pre-existing conditions (such as no NSAID, diabetes, etc.) can self sort themselves by choosing bands of varying colors. The bands also provide a digital storage space/self-updating software that, when plugged in by a health provider, automatically copies health data from the computer and stores the information for the next doctor.

How I built it

The device strap was made by dismantling chemical lab goggles and repurposing the strap. The digital USB component was built by harvesting the internals of a flash drive and applying epoxy to make the device waterproof. In order to connect the flash drive to the strap, we used conventional super glue. The female end of the USB adaptor was harvested from the provided JHU battery power packs (after some trial and error). From there, the device was expertly stitched together by our team and then painted red with lacquer polish.

The device contains a Java executable that detects the presence of a newly inserted media device that updates the sample file with the newest copy of patient records from the source computer.

Challenges I ran into

MedHacks unfortunately didn't provide much along the lines of hardware components, so components had to be sourced from what was available in our daily lives.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Through ingenuity and through man-hours, the team managed to actually build a prototype that captures the eventual design of the device. We also learned a lot about electronic health records and how the medical world stores information.

What I learned

More Java, How to Sew

What's next for Velox Health

We're going to release the open source for our CAD prototype, and also release the open source for our Java. Updating the device and 3D printing a model will help us quickly get this to the hands of those who need it.

Built With

• java
• real-world-engineering