Pneumaniacs

About the Project

The goal of this project is to decrease the rate of medication errors in hospitals by improving the pneumatic carrier systems used to transport medications from the pharmacy to the patient rooms. We achieve this increase in reliability by using RFID to guarantee the delivery of medications in the system to the correct patient room and to enable a notification system to warn nurses of medication errors.

The system prevents the late administration of drugs as well as the administration of medications to the wrong patient. If a caregiver fails to remove medications from the carrier within the time slot in which they are to be administered, a notification is displayed on a computer in the nurse's station, and the caregiver responsible is notified of the failure via text message. Our system also provides for access control to the carrier system, by requiring RFID identity verification before medications are released to the caregiver.

More detailed information about the project is available from the project deliverables. Photos and video of the project are available on the media page.

About the Pneumaniacs

The Pneumaniacs are a team of six students in the L05 section of ECE4007, Georgia Tech's senior design course for Electrical Engineers. All six members are Electrical Engineers graduating in 2009. The team members are:

• H.C. Bowden
  • Project Responsibities: Team Leader, In-room Station Construction
  • Specialties: Power Systems and Controls, RFID
• John Bowen
  • Project Responsibities: RFID Engineering
  • Specialties: Electromagnetics, Biomedical Engineering
• Tyler Howell
  • Project Responsibities: In-room Embedded Controller
  • Specialties: Power Electronics, Systems and Controls
• Kent Mustoe
  • Project Responsibities: In-room Station Construction
  • Specialties: Audio Engineering, Digital Signal Processing
• Laura Nguyen
  • Project Responsibities: In-room Embedded Controller
  • Specialties: Systems and Controls
• Robert Ussery
  • Project Responsibities: Webmaster, Server Backend Development
  • Specialties: Embedded Systems, Systems and Controls

The team is advised by Dr. Art Koblasz, a specialist in medical electronics applications. Dr. Koblasz presented the Pneumaniacs with the idea of a medication tracking system, and served in an advisory capacity during the development process.

Generous sponsorship for the medication tracking project has been provided by Pevco and Swisslog. These two pneumatic medication transport manufacturers have been very supportive of the project and have given freely of their time, experience, and resources to help make the project a success.

To obtain more information on the project, or to contact any of the team members, please consult the contact page.