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Student Designing a Medication Cooling Rucksack

I

ianfrid

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Hi,

I am a 21 year old Industrial Design student from Kent and I'm in my final year of University at Loughborough.

I plan to design and build a Medication Cooling Rucksack which will allow users to travel wherever they like without the worry of having to find a place to refrigerate their medication.

I want to veer away from the traditional "ice packs and cool bag" route, as I understand the ice packs often freeze the medication or do not last particularly long, together with condensation issues.

I plan on designing a visually appealing medium sized rucksack with a lower portion dedicated to the medicine cooler and the top portion storing whatever the user chooses. (Clothes/books etc) The rucksack will have a battery pack which will feed the small refrigeration unit with a selection of solar panels designed into the back allowing the battery to be topped up while outside.

I hope for an embedded power lead which can be plugged into the mains supply/car supply for longer charging periods.

I am currently in the brainstorming stage and require your thoughts/opinions/information.
A few specific questions I have at this stage (sorry for my ignorance :-s)....

- Am I correct in thinking that certain types of diabetes medicine do constantly need to be kept cool? What are the specific names of the meds?

- How big do you think the cooling chamber would need to be? I was planning for around 25cm wide, 15cm tall, 15cm deep? Will this fit the certain types of medication which require refrigeration?

- Is there anything else aside from the cooler which could be useful on a rucksack? Design features, shape of pockets etc?


Again, any thoughts/comments/questions/suggestions are really much appreciated.

Cheers

Ian
 
Sounds like a good idea ,Ian. How about a specially reinforced pocket that can act as a 'sharps' container? Either with removable liner or integrated liner.
 
Ian

I can see definate benefits of this type of product for some people.

I have type 1 diabetes and take part in long distance cycling (day events).

I had a look at the insulin manufacturers paperwork for penfill cartridges about storage.
Basically it is to be stored between 2 to 8 C, but is NOT refridgerated in use. Room temp is ok for about 4 weeks - but not above 30 C.

The difficulty I have found is that i need to take insulin with me and there is no ideal place to put it.

I think a cooled compartment or small bag sufficent in size to take 2 pens would be great.

I currently have to either put my insulin pens in a cycling jersey back pocket, where they get very warm,or squash them into a small bag I have under my bike saddle which again can be a problem depending on the weather.

I would not personally want a back pack when cycling; rather a very small bag.
However for your project it would be ideal for someone who went on a long trip away or even type 1 diabetics taking a holiday to the mediterranean who will need somewhere to keep spare insulin cartridges /pens

I think your cooled compartment design could possbly be quite a bit smaller than the sizes in your specification.
Not too sure how the engineering side would work but thats the sort of stuff I do for a living.

Good Luck
Mike
 
As a lot of diabetics are on multiple medications perhaps internal , concealed pockets would also be handy for keeping tablet medication hidden from view.
 
Hi Guys, thanks for the time taken to answer these questions.

Any more suggestions are more than welcome....

I am building up a nice collection of ideas to ponder over. :-)
 
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