Title: A hands-free pulse sensor to decrease “hands-off time” during CPR

Team: Luis Fernando Ayala Cardona, Alvin Kristoff Agatep, Kaleo Leonhardt, Leslie Martinez

Client: Emergency Medicine – Rahul Nayak, MD (Stanford University Medical Center)

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, most commonly referred to as CPR, is a life saving procedure involving performing chest compressions on patients that have undergone cardiac arrest. While CPR is an effective method of gaining back spontaneous circulation of blood, a major concern for medical specialists during this procedure is hands-off time. Hands-off time refers to the duration when chest compressions are interrupted in order to check the patient’s major vitals. One of the most important vitals to check for during CPR is a blood pulse, to verify whether the patient has had spontaneous recirculation and their heart has begun beating on its own.

Our unmet need centers on a method to decrease hands-off time during CPR to decrease mortality rate in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients