A New Pressure-Regulated Infusion System for Enhanced Precision in Neonatal Drug Delivery

Intravenous administration of medication for newborns and premature infants presents significant challenges due to the critical nature of dosage accuracy, particularly under settings including extremely low flow rates and fluids of different viscosities. Errors in dosing at such conditions can have serious consequences, including toxicity or even death. Classical delivery systems, such as syringe pumps, generally fail to offer reliable accuracy under these challenging settings. This work introduces a novel infusion system designed primarily for neonatal intensive care units, employing a pressure regulator and a robust controller based on sliding mode to overcome the previously mentioned limitations. The novel approach facilitates drug administration with good performances in spite of the presence of external perturbations. Comparative experiments show that the proposed system significantly reduces dosage errors which yields an improvement in terms of safety and efficacy of neonatal care units.