

Innovating Syringe Safety and Streamlining Manufacturing Integration
The Challenge
Innovate a safety solution for pre-filled syringes that reduces the burden commonly seen with user activated systems while streamlining the manufacturing process.
The Solution
An award-winning passive safety solution that pushes innovation across manufacturing, technical integration, and automation providing a simpler and safer injection experience.
The Story
Needlestick injuries are a huge issue for those administering and receiving injections. FDA guidance sparked the development of many safety systems traditionally assembled to pre-filled syringes following the manufacturing and filling process.
The current market leaders were typically described during research as "big", "bulky" and often not used properly due to extra forces needed to "activate" the systems.

Design Contributions

Experiential
Design Research
Human Factors
Interaction Design

Physical
Training Materials
Instructional Design
Concept Sketching
Design Language
Industrial Design
3D CAD
Prototyping
Package Development

Digital
Branding / Logo
Demo Videos
Animations

The Solution


Manufacturing and technical innovation delivering safer injection experiences
We benchmarked current safety offerings through user research, defining shortcomings and designing an intuitive, user-friendly solution, eliminating non-activation from healthcare practitioners


We overcame an over-constrained challenge and component interface barriers, engineering a super-slim technology functioning as intended and accommodating broad stack tolerance variability


We collaborated with today's syringe manufacturing leaders verifying integration with existing manufacturing cells and minimizing change parts needed, while also overcoming secondary shipping and transfer barriers that ultimately would have made any solution a deal-breaker



Project Details Below

Competitive Benchmarking
First, it was essential to thoroughly understand the existing market, commercial factors, existing technology, usability, and preference for existing safety solutions.

Generating Early Concepts
After scouring the heavily patented area of syringe safety technology, we generated ideas from "mild to wild", getting all ideas out on the table.





Extensive Learning through Prototyping
From rubber bands to 3D printing and spring forces, proving feasibility was the first challenge followed by precision optimization.
Innovation is messy.

Considering Prototype Packaging
Product packaging is an integral part of any user experience.
Naturally, we developed 3D-printed molds and vacuum formed blisters internally, including applying Tyvek sheeting (sterilizable barrier) for usability evaluation.




Evaluating Instructions Early
Improving device usability and human factors is not enough. Generating and evaluating quick reference guides alongside early device concepts enables valuable feedback to inform future enhancements to the instructions AND the device.
Understanding Usability
Executing user research early and frequently following every major design change informed the design process and future usability enhancements for optimum intuitiveness.



Distilling Research Findings
Research findings were synthesized into opportunity areas for improvement, spurring additional innovation cycles to optimize the design language, feature access, recognition, and overall affordances.
Integrating Usability and Manufacturing Insights
Proving technical feasibility allowed us to more efficiently evaluate usability, manufacturing, and automation integration revealing multiple key design enhancements needed to be successful.



Optimizing Components for Automation
Before investing in low-volume injection-molded samples, we developed internal jigs to dial-in component assembly forces and simulate simple one-step automation.



Market Development and Pre-Clinical Samples
As the technology matured, we designed and produced sample packaging to complement the advancing technology. This ensured safe transportation while scaling up for customer sampling and large scale user evaluations.




