We were engaged to develop a sustainable and user-friendly alternative to ethyl chloride spray, commonly used by anaesthetists to test the effectiveness of local anaesthetic. The existing solution poses health and environmental risks and is often disposed of after limited use. In response, we designed a reusable cooling probe with a steel tip, integrated thermometer, and durable casing-offering improved usability, safety, and a significantly reduced carbon footprint.
Ethyl chloride spray is widely used by anaesthetists on patients to check whether an area has been successfully numbed. It can reliably determine the effectiveness of a local anaesthetic based on the patient’s response to its cooling effect on the skin. Although this method is effective, it has various drawbacks particularly in terms of sustainability and usability.
These ethyl chloride cans are toxic to birds, animals and plants as well as humans (with evidence that it’s high risk of being a liver and kidney toxin as well as other health risks). They contain chloroethane gas which remains in the atmosphere for up to two months. On top of this, the cans are often perceived to be disposable and do not show how much is left so are thrown away after a single use.
There have been efforts made to develop an alternative method. For example, a product has been trialled in a UK hospital which utilises metal which, when stored in the fridge, gets cold enough to test anaesthetic effectiveness. This Cool Stick is already a huge step in improving the current solution however in early testing there have been some obvious problems with this device. This stick is often thrown away, at the great cost to the NHS, as healthcare professionals assume it’s a single use device. Another key problem is the lack of indication as to whether the stick is actually cold enough to be reliable. When HCP’s (healthcare professionals) aren’t sure, they will resort to using the ethyl chloride spray as a back up to make sure they have tested the skin properly. This means that the Cool Stick is not a complete solution that can replace the cans.
HD explored how to approach all the issues with the can and existing alternatives which resulted in a cooling probe concept. This reusable concept consists of a metal head, plastic case and integrated thermometer.
This new solution offers various benefits in terms of usability:
This new solution is 18% lighter than the current Cool Stick. Cooling and warming times were calculated to assess how the reduction in material (particularly the metal end) affected the usable time of the device. Assuming a starting temperature of 5° and an unusable temperature of 7°, the lighter device only reduces the usable time by 42 seconds (going from 7 mins 47 Seconds to 7 mins 5 seconds). This reduction in material provides huge benefits in terms of sustainability. Also, the reduced weight means that the HD Anaesthetic test device cools down quicker when placed in the fridge.
Further work was then done to reduce the weight even further and calculate the effect this has on device performance as well as sustainability in terms of emissions, disposed weight etc. The size of HD’s anaesthetic device was reduced further by 60%. This reduced the usable time to 5 mins 40 seconds. Usability testing would need to be carried out to determine whether a time of 5 mins would be sufficient to carry out the test.
A summary of sustainability calculation results is shown below. It should be noted that this top-level assessment focused on product use and disposal only and does not consider areas such as distribution. Existing tools have been used to calculate emission and weights, and key assumptions have been made to generate figures for comparison.
To delve even further into the analysis of the new device, there are additional things which can be considered:
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