Description:

Imagine a life-sustaining medical device with a failure rate of 50% over 2 years. Imagine also that there was no way of telling when it was going to fail except to wait for symptoms. Shunts that manage the build-up of fluid around the brain of hydrocephalus patients have the highest failure rate of any medical device. Shunt failure symptoms - headache, irritability, vomiting - are all common in children. So, patients and their whānau often urgently visit hospitals on suspicion of shunt failure. After admission and scans, more than 2/3 of hospital visits are deemed not to be the shunt. As one parent put it “it’s living with the knowledge that the shunt will fail but having no idea when that is just so stressful”. Our technology is improving the lives of people with hydrocephalus by providing a system to monitor brain pressure at home, changing their care from reactive to proactive, allowing them to live rurally with confidence and engage whānau in their care. We have developed the world’s first micro-implantable sensor for the brain.

The main design opportunity was to create a handheld device to enable patients to record their own brain pressure measurements at home. Engagement with medical technology is notoriously hard with a significant issue being a lack of adherence to making regular measurements. The design of the wand needed to incorporate not only the complex internal array of electronics designed to provide wireless power and receive data but also be aesthetically pleasing and not obviously medical when placed in a home environment. It was also critical to consider the use case being children and parents. Finally, we had to take into account the stringent requirements for medical devices in terms of safety.