Billions of needles and syringes are used every year by healthcare workers and ordinary citizens. If disposed of improperly, needle and syringe waste can create a serious biohazard, because any infected blood from the inner tube cannot be broken down or processed through recycling.
This accumulation of waste could reach an all-time peak with the global launch of vaccines COVID-19, but a designer came up with a solution. Daniel López Velasco and Ithzel Libertad Cerón López have created Helix, a special foldable syringe that can become the eco-friendly alternative to disposable devices used in today's healthcare sector.
An origami syringe
Consider a conventional syringe. Plastic tubes and thin steel needle, requires the use of 5 different construction materials: steel, polyethylene, rubber, resin, glue and thermal dye. To make the construction process less laborious and expensive, Helix is built with a single material: FlexiOH UV, a type of thermoset silicone.
To maintain the flexibility of the bendable parts of the Helix syringe and the rigidity of the needle, the designers used thermal curing. This is a temperature-induced hardening process.
Helix is inspired by the ability to compact a lot of volume and space through the paper folding art of origami. The crystalline silicone structure of the Helix syringe can transport vaccine liquids and be emptied by "squeezing" it.
How the Helix syringe works
The medication can be poured into the syringe through a vacuum loading port located above the rigid needle plunger. First of all the plunger. When ready for use, the rigid plunger lowers. It then compresses the bendable plunger, successfully and safely administering the medication to the patient through the rigid silicone needle.
By building Helix out of a single material and giving it a compact, foldable structure, designers have created an environmentally friendly alternative to the conventional syringe and needle, also reducing its size by 30%. Plus you don't even need to remove the needle for disposal.
