Testing of infusions using an optoacoustic sensor system

The Laser-Laboratorium Göttingen eV wins this year's tender for GO-Bio initially from the BMBF.

The project "Optoacoustic sensor system for monitoring infusions" (Oase) of the Photonic Sensor Technology department made it into the first of two phases of the Go-Bio inital funding measure. In this highly competitive tender by the BMBF, 41 of 178 project ideas with recognizable innovation potential were approved for the exploratory phase.


In intensive care medicine there is an increased risk of errors due to the complexity of the treatment. In most cases, modern intensive therapy includes pharmacological therapy, whereby a large number of drugs have to be administered intravenously. Since a mistake in the preparation or administration of infusion solutions can have serious consequences, incorrect medication administration causes millions of undesirable complications worldwide every year. In the worst case, these can lead to patient death. The Federal Association of German Hospital Pharmacists has determined that in Germany the provision and administration of drugs deviates from the corresponding medical prescription in up to five percent of all cases.

The aim of the project is to develop a sensor system that identifies drugs based on their chemical-physical properties before they are administered to patients. This should make it possible to significantly reduce the number of incorrect medications in intensive care medicine. It is planned to merge two analytical methods, Raman spectroscopy and ultrasound measurement, in order to enable both qualitative and quantitative identification of the medication.

The focus of the exploratory phase is the conceptual design of the sensor system. Building on this, the feasibility check can follow in a second phase.

The project is funded by the BMBF. The term is initially 1 year.

Contact person in LLG
Dr. Georgios Ctistis
Photonic Sensor Technology Department
Tel: +49(0)551/5035-27
Fax: +49(0)551/5035-99
Email: georgios.ctistis (at) llg-ev.de

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