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Friday, March 6, 2009
Inventor’s injection device relieves the anticipated pain of shots
By Marc Songini
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A local device inventor is trying to take the sting out of the task of performing repeated injections.
The original syringe was invented in 1853 and has largely been left unchanged, noted Chris Hillios, a retired inventor who said he has improved on the concept with his Confidisc platform. He said the traditional syringe’s design is highly limited, and created with the health care professional in mind. People who need repeated injections find the process unpleasant, difficult and intimidating. When injecting, the patient will often become nervous when looking at the needle, causing hesitation and errors. Confidisc hides the needle and lets the patient focus properly.
“There is a huge amount of people suffering from injection anxiety,” said Hillios, himself a diabetic. “Some people would rather lose a leg or go blind rather than inject themselves,” he said. “I put it off six years.”
To aid in the filling of the syringe and ease the anxiety of injection, he created a medical device prototype called Confidisc. The Confidisc is essentially a polymer-based disk 1.25 inches in diameter that can fit onto a syringe and act as a stable base on the skin to make it easier to inject, said Hillios. It can be manufactured as an attachment product for a syringe or pen, or as a new hypodermic syringe.
Hillios has funded the development of Confidisc himself and isn’t interested in launching a company. Rather, he’d like to have an investor and partner do that, and make back what he’s spent so far.
The potential market could include the 20 millon or so diabetics in the United States. Some syringe makers already sell devices to assist in injection, such as spring-loaded needles, but these cost as much as $49 and are cumbersome and “very intimidating.” The Confidisc is designed to be simple and would cost only about a dollar. “This simple, cost-effective, no-brainer type of thing should have been done years ago,” Hillios said.
While nothing can really take away injection anxiety, such a device can go quite a ways to at least assisting those who are not medical professionals in performing the injections more precisely, noted Tom Tracy, surgeon-in-chief at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, R.I.
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