Design and development of a hand massage device for blood donation process

Abstract

Blood collection center all over the world face the challenge of maintaining a sufficient supply to balance the demand for blood products. Besides the more severe donor selection criteria, the aging population and natality rate are the factors which influence the pool potential donors and cannot be easily changed. Continuous donor recruitment and retention are essential to maintain the nation’s blood supply and to ensure the ability to meet future needs. In this study, a systematic approach is used to design and build a hand massage device for blood donation process. The design and development is based on standard procedure suggested by Karl Ulrich Steven Eppinger. Quality Function Deployment approach is used to define the customer needs or requirements and translating into specific plans to produce product to meet those needs. The main elements in the prototype include the vibration system, heat element system and sensoring system. The prototype was tested during the blood donation campaign that organized by Kolej Kemahiran Tinggi MARA in March 2014. Result shows that the recommendation from all respondent agreed that the developed prototype device is suitable to be used by the donor during blood donation process in order to improve the amount and increase the confident level. Investigation also showed that the prototype is able to reduce the donation time more than 85% as compared to without using any device during the blood donation process.