KMC Cable Management

Collaborated with Rice 360 in creating clips for Kangaroo Mother Care.

Medical Engineering Design

Jul 26, 2025

Kangaroo Mother Care Clip (Rice360)

Role:

Lead Design Engineer

Toolkit

Fusion 360
Bambu 3D Printers
Adobe Illustrator
Polyeurothane
Silicone

Summary

As a Design Engineer at Rice University’s OEDK, I led the development of a specialized medical hardware solution for Kangaroo Mother Care in collaboration with Rice360. This project required balancing clinical precision with rugged durability for neonatal health environments.

Iterative Hardware Design: Led the development of an innovative cable management solution through 7+ complete design iterations to optimize functionality and user safety.

Advanced Manufacturing: Utilized industrial fabrication techniques, including Polyurethane and Silicone molding, to create durable, medical-grade components.

Rigorous Validation: Conducted extensive stress and usability testing, executing 500+ individual test cycles to ensure reliability in high-stakes clinical settings.

Cross-Disciplinary Engineering: Integrated technical skills in CAD, prototyping, and material science to transition from conceptual sketches to a functional manufactured product

Introduction

Immediate Kangaroo Mother Care (iKMC) is a method of caring for preterm or low-birth-weight infants that emphasizes continuous skin-to-skin contact between the baby and a parent, typically the mother. Developed as a low-cost alternative to incubator care, KMC involves three key components: skin-to-skin positioning, exclusive breastfeeding, and temperature regulation. This technique helps regulate the baby’s temperature, breathing, and heart rate, while also promoting bonding and improving survival and developmental outcomes. KMC is supported by the World Health Organization and has been widely adopted in both low-resource and advanced medical settings.

Problem Statement

Disorganized cables and tubes during Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) pose safety and comfort risks, highlighting the need for a simple, accessible, and user-friendly management solution.

Our Goal

The objective is to design a product that effectively organizes and manages medical cords for both preterm infants and their mothers during care. This solution must be safe and comfortable for both users, ensuring that it does not interfere with critical medical functions or cause discomfort. It should be lightweight, easy to use, and facilitate immediate kangaroo mother care (iKMC), allowing mothers to maintain close physical contact with their babies without complication. Additionally, the design should accommodate multiple medical devices commonly used in neonatal care. Affordability and ease of production are also key goals, ensuring the solution can be widely manufactured and accessible in various healthcare settings.

Design Criteria & Constraints

Accommodate CPAP (18mm), NG (3mm), IV (1mm)

Support at least 4 cables (clip), 6 cables (stand).
Sterilizable or disposable for hospital setting
Lightweight if on body(<5g).
Durable(>=100 mount/unmount cycles)
Ergonomic(One-handed cable insert.

Proposed Initial Design

**proposed initial sketches of the design solution

Iterations

The first iteration included a garment, but upon testing, we realized an external clip might be more functional and cost-effective. With this in mind, we iterated a dual system with a garment clip along with a functional tube clip that clips to an IV drip stand.

Moving forward, we iterated further on this, making changes to the hinge that holds the IV drip stand more functionally and iterating the clip so that the tube holder is circular and holds the tube in place.

The subsequent iterations included adding serrated bits to the bottoms of the smaller tube holders and adding different sizes to a base clip to accommodate more tube types and shapes. Additionally, the clip itself was serrated to grip clothing more securely.