This paper presents a microfluidic thermal flowmeter for monitoring injection pumps, which is essential to ensure proper patient treatment and reduce medication errors that can lead to severe injury or death. The standard gravimetric method for flow-rate monitoring requires a great deal of preparation and laboratory equipment and is impractical in clinics. Therefore, an alternative to the standard method suitable for remote, small-scale, and frequent infusion-pump monitoring is in great demand. Here, we propose a miniaturized thermal flowmeter consisting of a silicon substrate, a platinum heater layer on a silicon dioxide thin-membrane, and a polymer microchannel to provide accurate flow-rate measurement. The present thermal flowmeter is fabricated by the micromachining and micromolding process and exhibits sensitivity, linearity, and uncertainty of 0.722 mW/(g/h), 98.7%, and (2.36 ± 0.80)%, respectively, in the flow-rate range of 0.5-2.5 g/h when the flowmeter is operated in the constant temperature mode with the channel width of 0.5 mm. The measurement range of flow rate can be easily adjusted by changing the cross-sectional microchannel dimension. The present miniaturized thermal flowmeter shows a high potential for infusion-pump calibration in clinical settings.
Keywords: human health; infusion pump calibration; low flow rate measurement; microelectromechanical systems (MEMS); microfluidic thermal flowmeters; real-time sensors.