Over the years I’ve had a lot of ideas, some good and some not. When an idea comes to me, I typically record it in a notebook that I have sitting on my desk. Occasionally I return to the notebook and review the ideas to see how many of the ideas still have merit. Sometimes an idea has become outdated, and rarely an idea will have materialized as a product of similar design built by a company. And then there’s a group of ideas and concepts that still hold value but haven’t been seen in the market.
Today I was rummaging through some of my old ideas. One of them from 2010 caught my attention. In 2010 I thought it would be cool if someone could use technology to analyze the IV fluid being administered to a patient in real-time. Basically, such a system would prevent the wrong IV medication from being hung on a patient, thus preventing a medication error.
I recalled seeing a product in 2011 called IV Check by S.E.A. Medical. IV Check was a great concept. I felt that the technology would be a good fit for use in a bedside IV fluid monitoring system. I visited the S.E.A. Medical site this morning and found that the company was granted a patient in 2014 for such a system.
“SEA Medical Systems announced that U.S. Patent # 8,728,025, “Intravenous fluid monitoring,” was granted today. This patent covers equipment and methods for monitoring intravenous fluids during administration to patients including near real-time monitoring of the identity of one or more components of an intravenous fluid.”
Additional information on the patent can be found here.
This really is quite brilliant, and overdue in my opinion. I have not seen this technology in practice but hope to soon.
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