This past week, Brittany and I have been in charge of putting together 100 sample kits for DoseRight! DoseRight is a syringe clip that acts as a guiding tool to help ensure that proper amounts of liquid medication are being provided each time. Misdosing of liquid medication is actually an alarmingly common occurrence. This becomes quite a problem, especially when administering anti-retroviral medications for children with HIV. Overmedicating or misdosing can lead to potentially fatal drug resistance. The DoseRight clip is an especially simple and intuitive solution for this problem, especially for medical practitioners that may have trouble with literacy or visual acuity and dexterity. You can read more at http://rice360.rice.edu/tech.

Considering the size and simplicity of this particular technology, putting together a kit takes a surprising amount of assembly! There are quite a few parts, many of which must be custom made or printed to order. I communicated with our local copy and print shop to get the instructions printed on appropriate cardstock, which then needed to be cut and folded to size. A similar process was used for the labels. The clips themselves had to be individually assembled to have an array of different size pieces (for different dosage amounts). Two clips, two syringes, an instruction card, and 3 labels are put on each box. Though there were quite a few steps, they were relatively simple (especially after working with the internal components in the Pumani!), and Brittany and I finished the 100 sample kits along with a few extra.

Working with the DoseRight was a really nice change of pace for me. Putting these boxes together was almost a little therapeutic. Throughout the process though, I was constantly communicating with Pride and the shipping company since it was the day for the Pumani units to be boxed and sent to Malawi! Facilitating the communication between the correct people took a bit of effort, but I’m so glad that they are finally complete and on their way.