InterVene® Safety Needle is the world's first manually retractable, hypodermic safety needle that can be used with standard luer lock and luer slip syringes.
Characteristics of InterVene® Safety Needle
Cost-effective solution to reduce needlestick injuries
Quick and easy to use, varying little from standard practice
Fits commonly-used luer lock or luer slip syringes
Fingers need never go forward of the contaminated needle
Low angle of entry and auto-alignment of bevel during venepuncture
Single-handed operation possible throughout
Impossible to reuse once the safety feature has been activated
Complies with ISO standards for deadspace
Suitable for intravenous, intramuscular and subcutaneous injection
Completely eliminates the chances of re-capping the needle cannula
The tip and shaft of the needle are never obscured during use
Available in a variety of gauge sizes
Blood Collection
InterVene® Safety Needle works particularly well with certain blood collection systems as a multi-sample needle.*
1. Automatic bevel alignment speeds up the needle insertion process.
2. The needle's offset design offers a very shallow angle of entry to the vein reducing the risk of popping the vein.
3. The transparent cap of InterVene Safety Needle ensures that flashback visualisation of blood is immediate.
These features are designed to assist the phlebotomist whilst offering a safety needle and reducing disposal costs.
*Requires needle adapter
InterVene® Safety Needle - Gauges and sizes
The Evolution of InterVene® Safety Needle
The hypodermic safety needle we now know as InterVene® Safety Needle was originally an Australian concept, which first provoked interest in the 1990s. Whilst the prime objective behind designing a safety needle was to produce a device that would reduce needlestick injuries, there were other considerations. The design team was presented with what proved to be a very challenging basic remit; to produce a safety needle that could be used with conventional syringes. Such a device should not be prohibitively expensive to purchase, nor should it have consequential costs associated with additional training requirements or speciality syringes. In other words, it was important to adhere as closely as possible to current protocols.
Covering the Needle - One option was to develop a sheath that could be snapped over the contaminated needle, post-use. Although this initially appeared to be an elegant solution, it presented problems. It was difficult to design a cover that would sit alongside a hypodermic needle throughout the procedure, without obscuring visibility of the shaft and the tip of the needle or impeding its use. It became clear that such an encumbrance would not only hinder the operation for the clinician but it invited users to position their fingers dangerously close to the contaminated needle in order to activate the safety mechanism. This was not something infection control experts or occupational health specialists would be likely to condone. Moreover, this type of design also presented problems with bevel alignment.
Retracting the Needle - The designers quickly came to the conclusion that the most effective idea would be some form of retraction. An obvious solution would be to create a device where the needle is retracted back into the syringe post use, using the redundant syringe as a ‘coffin’ to accommodate the dead needle. Brilliant! However, once again, trials generated more interesting feedback. Organisations were generally opposed to changing the syringes they already used. In some circumstances they were unable to change. Many used pre-filled syringes and for obvious reasons did not want to decant sterile medication into a second syringe. Others had stockpiles of conventional syringes and commitments to honour with suppliers, so this would be a ‘hard sell’. One particular idea involved permanently fixing the needle to the syringe during manufacture. However, it became apparent that additional problems would present themselves with such a design. If the procedure involved the drawing up of medication from a vial then it would not be possible to replace the needle for injection. For obvious reasons, this contradicts good procedural practice in many organisations throughout the world, including the UK. Also, stock requirements would be onerously excessive – as with shoe stores, to stock a particular shoe in nine sizes of just two colours and two different width fittings requires a stockholding of 36 shoes just to have one of each available! If the needle and syringe are permanently attached, the same applies to syringes of different sizes with a range of needle gauges and cannula lengths. For the designers, this ruled out the use of a fixed needle / syringe combination. Other issues became apparent with this concept and the design team were forced back to the drawing board.
Extrinsic Attachment - Nevertheless, retracting the needle did have more of an appeal than covering it, so the next challenge was to find an acceptable means of retraction. The design team were working on the assumption that it would be impossible to automatically retract a needle into the barrel of a conventional syringe. This gave rise to the concept of offsetting the needle in order to allow it to be retracted into its own extrinsic ‘coffin’. Consequently, the initial architecture, shown in the diagram above, was established which involved attaching the needle to the tip of the syringe and clipping it to the barrel of the syringe. Thus the project name ‘Clip-On’ was established for the device. Although this allowed the team to ’sure up’ the concept of an extrinsic attachment, it did not overcome the ‘shoe size’ stocking issue as different sized syringes required a different sized clip. Nevertheless, a major breakthrough had been achieved; at this stage a fundamental design had been determined that could be used with a conventional luer slip syringe. It was only later, when the barrel clip was removed that the same needle could be used with different sizes of syringe, thereby overcoming the problem of having to stock specific sized needles for different sized syringes.
Thus the main design of the device was further established, the offset nature allowing a steel cannula to be retracted into a external housing without interfering with the design of the syringe. This allowed clnicians to introduce a safe needle policy with the use of regular luer slip syringes. However, there were still two initial concerns with this concept. The first was that there would be deadspace where medication could be lost between the contents of the syringe and the base of the needle. However in production, the maximum deadspace was calculated to be just 0.03ml, significantly less than the potential residual contents of the needle itself and well within the requirements of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) for deadspace. The second was a concern that clinicians would not like the idea of the needle being offset from the centre of the syringe, but during evaluations it became apparent that this concept was already well accepted. The extrinsic attachment of the needle cannula not only allowed a very convenient angle of entry to the vein, but also automatically aligned the bevel in the correct position without fail. After all, this is the reason that offset tips were manufactured on larger syringes - specifically to provide a low angle of entry to the vein during IV injections / blood draw in order to reduce the risk of advancing the needle through the distal wall of the vein.
Further Design Modifications – In 2007 CE marking was secured for that particular design and then it was a case of trialling the safety needle on patients for the first time. This gave rise to a number of final iterations, the most notable of which was a redesign of the sheath to increase the interference with the syringe and a slight modification to allow it to be used with conventional luer lock syringes in addition to luer slip. Finally, as the device no longer clipped around the barrel of the syringe the name was changed from 'Clip-On' to 'Surety Needle' and following the inception of InterVene®, it became known as simply InterVene® Safety Needle.
Uniquely, the end result is something that ‘ticks all the boxes’ for clinicians. The Needle will soon be available for purchase in four gauge sizes and is available via the Syringes, Needles and Associated Products Framework Agreement from NHS Supply Chain.
For more information on the InterVene® Safety Needle email us at info@ivltd.co.uk or visit our Contact Us page to leave a message.
Blood Collection
The Evolution of InterVene® Safety Needle
Thus the main design of the device was further established, the offset nature allowing a steel cannula to be retracted into a external housing without interfering with the design of the syringe. This allowed clnicians to introduce a safe needle policy with the use of regular luer slip syringes. However, there were still two initial concerns with this concept. The first was that there would be deadspace where medication could be lost between the contents of the syringe and the base of the needle. However in production, the maximum deadspace was calculated to be just 0.03ml, significantly less than the potential residual contents of the needle itself and well within the requirements of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) for deadspace. The second was a concern that clinicians would not like the idea of the needle being offset from the centre of the syringe, but during evaluations it became apparent that this concept was already well accepted. The extrinsic attachment of the needle cannula not only allowed a very convenient angle of entry to the vein, but also automatically aligned the bevel in the correct position without fail. After all, this is the reason that offset tips were manufactured on larger syringes - specifically to provide a low angle of entry to the vein during IV injections / blood draw in order to reduce the risk of advancing the needle through the distal wall of the vein. 
