Accu-Injection – Assisting in Daily Medical Injection Regimen

On a daily basis, millions of people self administer subcutaneous injections of medication. While this daily routine becomes automatic to the patient, injection site management is an important choice. Over time, repeated injection points may become sore or develop irreparable damage. An attempt to avoid same injection sites is made but requires accounting for previous and forecasting upcoming injection points.

Complications of repeated subcutaneous injections may range from patient discomfort, bleeding and sustained sensitivity to tissue damage. In extreme cases, repeated same-site injection results in the destruction of fatty tissue leading to disfigurement, called lipoatrophy. Routine injections are typically performed by relying upon memory or a log book to determine previous injection sites and where the best spot for the current day’s injection may be. Beneficial advancement would incorporate a simple means of automatically recording and predicting upcoming daily best fit injection sites.

Accu-Injection is conceptually an inexpensive combination of software and hardware that assist in tracking and predicting appropriate subcutaneous injection sites, Figure 1. Accu-Injection provides a printable body overlay with an injection “cross hair” indicating where that day’s injection is to be administered, Figure 2.

Accu- Injection may work something like this: the patient prepares for the daily injection by accessing the Accu-Injection program, which provides that day’s best location for the injection. A clean template is printed out containing an injection point “cross hair”. The template is overlaid in a location on the body specific to the patient’s medical condition and appropriate injection site. The patient performs the injection at the site marked by the “cross hair”. After the injection is performed, the patient confirms with the Accu-Injection software that the injection was administered in the site as prescribed. Once confirmed and recorded by date, Accu-Injection determines the following day’s optimum injection location.

Accu-Injection “learns” by patient input to avoid certain permanent skin abnormalities (moles, blemishes, freckles) as well as temporary skin conditions (bruises, rashes, blisters, painful spots). Adjusting for patient injection point history and “learned” skin avoidance locations, Accu-Injection maps out the next series of injection points and prepares for the patient to request and print the dated “cross hair” template. As skin conditions change, Accu-Injection has the programming to avoid those new problem areas until the patient advises.

Accu-Injection records and maps out the end user’s entire injection history and forecasts the future injection sites. Injection history is retrievable back to the original date of use and is valuable when provided to medical staff for evaluation should any skin concerns arise. Body size templates would be considered as the contours and locations would vary (i.e. small, medium, etc.) among body frames. In addition, the occasional forgotten injection days may occur but would also be recorded by date to update available injection site data.

Accu-Injection would help many patients living with the need for daily medical injections in a safe, predictable and reliable manner.