Fearsome / MSF: Innovating IV Fluid Holders for Land Cruisers

Over the course of three weeks in January, TWB tenants Fearsome teamed up with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) nurse Josie Gilday and logistical technician Anup Ravi to prototype a design solution for hanging IV fluid drips in moving Land Cruisers, in conflict zones, places experiencing epidemics and locations where no other healthcare is available.

“The facilities and opportunities within The Whisky Bond make it a great base for Fearsome’s product advancement work. Playing an active role in TWB’s community brought about our collaboration with MSF and a resulting project that we are proud to be involved with.” – Nils Aksnes, Fearsome

The collaborative project between Fearsome and MSF was initiated via Distillery member Pete Masters who is the Medical Innovations Advisor for MSF. Pete met Nils Aksnes from Fearsome at an unrelated event at The Whisky Bond, where the idea for this collaborative project was initiated. The project evolved naturally as the pair were able to establish where Médecins Sans Frontières and Fearsome’s interests and objectives overlap.  This is a testament to the value of combining different skills, knowledge and experiences while ensuring access to practical resources and technologies, to genuinely innovate and create new design solutions to real problems – something that the Whisky Bond is proud to support!

“Working in the Whisky Bond for MSF is interesting because you can’t help but see things from an interdisciplinary perspective.” – Pete Masters, MSF

Why was this collaboration important?

MSF use Land Cruisers that drive on a variety of terrains and are used for many different purposes: from being packed with medical supplies, loaded with sand and wood, to being used for a mobile clinic or to transfer patients several times a day.

In the field, there is not necessarily one Land Cruiser that could be called an ‘ambulance’ and therefore when transferring patients, the cars are set up as they are needed according to different situations. This often means that the vehicles are not properly equipped for emergency situations, including nowhere to safely hang IV fluids. Until this point, the problem had been quickly patched over using unsustainable temporary measures, such as holding up the fluid bags by hand, or strapping them to the hand rails with a latex glove, bandage or piece of string. A safer, more sustainable solution was needed.

Over the three weeks of intensive research, designing and prototyping Anup and Josie were able to build and test several different variations of their proposed IV fluids holders. They even built a custom life-sized model of the interior of the Land Cruiser in Fearsome’s office to ensure rigorous testing of their designs.

After frequent trips back and forth to different 3-D printed options and some improvisation (in the shape of a borrowed elastic strap from a rucksack) – the final prototype was successfully delivered by the team.

And now the real testing begins.

The team will now introduce the design to Land Cruisers and medics in the field, hopefully leading to every Land Cruiser becoming better equipped with more suitable, sustainable infrastructure to treat patients in the areas that need it most.

For more info about Fearsome and some of the other projects they are involved in, visit their website here.

For more detail about the project and to read Josie’s innovation blog, visit MSF’s website here.

Featured image credit: Natacha Buhler/ MSF