14/15 DDX: Drug Dispensing BoX in collaboration with One-2-One Cambodia
ENGG4930 students tackled the challenges faced by One-2-One Cambodia in drug delivery by designing a drug dispensing box that is centered to the user needs of an organized and durable box suited to the challenging terrain faced by the team.
Problem
The One-2-One Cambodia medical team takes weekly trips to the slums to provide mobile clinic services to the inhabitants there. Part of this team is the mobile pharmacy, which the staff would pack all medicines into a suitcase and chuck it to the slums. This was an inconvenient and inefficient way of transporting, organizing and dispensing the medicine. First, the medicines were often a heap of mess after transportation, making setting-up and inventory checks a nightmare and very time consuming. Second, the wheels of the suitcases broke frequently on unpaved roads, rendering them useless and requiring the suitcase to be carried by hand.
Solution
The Cheesecake Team worked with One-2-One Cambodia to develop a new way of transporting and organizing medicine during transport, one which not only allows the medical team greater ease during transport, quicker setup times of the pharmacy station and more convenient inventory checks, but also a solution that is attuned to the environment in which it operates. This is the Drug Dispensing boX (DDX). Two sets of DDXes were made, brought over to Phnom Penh and handed over to One-2- One Cambodia, where the 2 DDXes had their field testing phase.
The DDX keeps medicines at their own places, allows for categorisation to allow for quick set-up of the pharmacy station. The DDX could also be carried with a robust trolley to withstand the harsh slum roads, and could also be carried as a bag pack along with rain covers in cases of rain and floods.
