Food allergies are stressful, but when you have an allergy that could lead to a severe reaction requiring epinephrin, they’re extremely scary. Remembering all the steps to administer medicine to yourself or someone you care for can be tough, which is why the Auvi-Q, a talking injector, is such a brilliant idea.
When you need to use an Auvi-Q, it helpfully talks you through the process. Take off the protective cover, and it tells you to position the injector, then does a countdown during the injection and announces when the injection is complete. All this is important because in an emergency you may not have time to stop and think clearly about what to do-having the emergency medicine tell you how to proceed helps reduce mistakes. The Auvi-Q also comes with a dummy tester unit so you can practice the steps and demonstrate it to a caretaker to make sure they understand how to use it as well.
In addition to the audio cues that make it special, the Auvi-Q is also smaller and more compact than a traditional epi-pen. We haven’t had any issues fitting my son’s into an easily accessible pocket in his backpack; I would say an individual injector is about the size of 2-3 USB flash drives. While we haven’t had to use it (and we hope we never will), it’s comforting to know that we won’t be on our own dispensing the medicine, and we will have the device walking us through it each step of the way! It’s a brilliant use of simple technologies to make medicine safer and easier!
You can learn more about Auvi-Q, how it works and even try a demo online at their website. Have you seen similar uses of step by step voice commands to make medical devices safer?