Design of an intelligent medical splint with 3D printing and pressure detection

The traditional medical splint has been used to fix fractures for many years. It can only rely on the doctor's experience to control the pressure which will directly affect the rehabilitation process of the fracture. A set of intelligent medical splints that can automatically detect pressure and body temperature is proposed in this paper. Firstly, wide splint which is one of the traditional four splints used for radial fracture fixation is redesigned and printed by 3D printing technique. On the basis of ergonomics, the splint adds high-density ventilation holes, the groove of the tie wire, contact points of sensor, groove of circuit and battery. Secondly, the pressure sensor was selected and the circuit was designed. The circuit can detect several channel of pressure and one channel of temperature, simultaneously. Furthermore, the smart splint can display the pressure and temperature values locally on an OLED display screen, and can also upload data to a mobile phone using Bluetooth. After using big data analysis of patient rehabilitation data, it can be find a better treatment plan for the fractures.