This year, Commack's technology department participated in its forth NYIT Engineering Showcase Competition. All three groups earned the first, second, and third place prizes and won $1,000, $800, and $600, respectively. Below are some descriptions of the projects:
First place- ID Me
Kayla Houshmand and David Li
Emergency response teams worldwide face many issues that are never fully resolved. Many of these response teams include volunteer ambulance corporations across the nation. One major issue ambulance corporations come across is obtaining records of every patient assisted. In many cases the patients are found unconscious with little to no identification found on them. On some occasions, unconscious patients are allergic to many medications which can make it difficult for the Advanced Life Support provider or paramedic present to treat the patient in fear of causing more medical conditions.
A database for receiving the basic medical history and other basic information has been created in order to treat patients with better care. In order to obtain the correct knowledge of whether a medication will be safe for a patient or not, the system constructed identifies the medical history of a patient via fingerprint. A fingerprint scanner has been optimized and hooked up wirelessly to a computer, which contains a custom database, which can detect the unresponsive, frequent patients whose basic medical information then becomes accessible in order for treatment to be applied. This product maximizes progress and saves time within in the ambulance for more hands-on medical attention rather than paper work for the patient in need of help.
Second Place- Voice Assist “Office Top”
Brianna Delgado, Anoop Singh, Melike Akoglu, Abinaya Anand, and Yonghyun Cho
The motive for engineering OfficeTop was to meet the workplace needs of Mr. Glenn Campbell, an attorney with Quadriplegia. OfficeTop is composed of two motorized stands that hold, on his desk, work-required items including a laptop computer, mobile phone and/or a book/tablet. Through voice control, Mr. Campbell can control access and the position of these items. This gives him more freedom and easier control over his work space.
Third place- BVM group
Claire Drotman, Will Furst, and Chase Oliver
The BVM group focused on the design and construction of a device to aid emergency medical service personnel in utilizing a bag-valve-mask. A bag-valve-mask (BVM) is a self-inflating resuscitation device utilized by emergency medical service personnel and in hospital settings to provide artificial ventilation to patients who are unable to control their own airway and breath on their own. Since its’ development in 1953 by Henning Ruben, the bag-valve-mask has not been modified despite the many problems that can occur if used incorrectly, such as hyperventilation, gastric distension and volutrauma (damage to the lung caused by over-distension by a mechanical ventilator).
To assure EMS personnel that they are providing an adequate flow of air to patients, a prototype device was created using a pressure sensor and Arduino Uno to sense the pressure of air exerted into a patient’s lungs and notify EMS personnel if they are squeezing with too much or too little pressure, thus increasing the chances of patient survival. The prototype device operated using a 3-light system, using the colors red, yellow and green. With each squeeze a light would light up depending on the pressure at which the user squeezes the bag. Yellow indicates that not enough air is going into the lungs, red suggests that the user is exerting too much pressure, therefore misusing the BVM, and green advices the user that he or she is squeezing with the correct amount of pressure.
~Ashley Cooper
