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Prototype Crash Cart Moves to Smithsonian

 |  By cclark@healthleadersmedia.com  
   September 03, 2010

Photo courtesy of ECRI Institute

Max, one of the first prototype cardio resuscitation crash carts when created in 1965, is moving to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American istory in Washington, D.C.

Max "helped enhance hospital's efficiency in emergencies by enabling doctors and nurses to save time, thereby increasing the chances of saving a life," says the ECRI Institute, an independent nonprofit that evaluates medical devices, techniques and drugs, which is making the donation.

The cart and its supplies improved response times and minimized errors because MAX enabled providers to efficiently gather all the life-saving tools needed for emergency patient care. "These patient-centered qualities are now emphasized in today's rapidly changing healthcare system."

Max was given national publicity in 1966 in a LIFE magazine feature.

Brent D. Glass, museum director, said Max "is a representation of an important period in the history of cardiology an cardiac surgery." The cart was designed and created by Joel J. Nobel, MD while he was a surgical resident at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia three years before he founded the ECRI Institute.

"Nobel's focus on human factors, prevention of operator error and speed of operation paved the way to improved patient care and greater efficiency in American Medicine."

 

The prototype cart, 34 inches high and 79 inches long when fully extended, is outfitted with the medical equipment and pharmaceuticals used in the late 1960s and 1970s, including a pneumatic cardiac compressor, electrocardiograph, respirator, pacemaker and intubation gear.

It also recorded voice from the moment it was moved, as well as ECG, which helped with later analysis and improvements.

Nobel's statement about Max is included on the organization's website:

He called it "an assembly jig for resuscitation. It reduced the number of clinical staff needed and radically reduced the time needed to establish and maintain effective life support. It had a couple of technical innovations too, like a two-stage tuned air ejector to provide suction and a pistol grip and trigger to modulate suction. I worked with several engineers at Hamilton-Standard to develop it."

He added that Max taught me a couple of lessons that stayed with me. How arduous it is to create something, and bring it to the market, and get people to accept something new, regardless of how much better it works."

Max's new home with the Smithsonian will be in the museum's Division of Science and Medicine.

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