‘Safer Blood Sampling’
Arterial GlucoSave is an innovation designed to help prevent incidences of inappropriate administration of insulin during blood sampling.
In intensive care and operating theatres, blood samples are frequently taken from arterial lines to measure a patient’s blood chemistry.
Arterial lines are maintained with a saline flush solution, however if a glucose-containing flush solution is accidentally attached to the arterial line it can artificially raise the patient’s blood sample glucose measurement. Without realising the error nursing staff may inappropriately administer insulin, resulting in the patient developing hypoglycemia that can lead to fatal brain injury.
This administration error is reported approximately 3 times per month to NHS England. The National Patient Safety Agency have issued an alert highlighting the error and recommended the development of safety solutions to prevent this mistake.
Dr Maryanne Mariyaselvam, Clinical Research Fellow, Division of Anaesthesia, Cambridge University Teaching Hospitals and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Kings Lynn says “Receiving support from the Medtech Accelerator is fantastic and has meant that we can make a start and speed up the progress of our innovation project in a very meaningful way.”
The technology was licensed to Medovate, a technology development company, in 2019 with plans to complete the product development and CE marking. For more information visit https://www.medovate.co.uk/products/glucosave.
Inventors
Dr Maryanne Mariyaselvam and Dr Peter Young
NHS Organisation
Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust
Award Amount
£114,820