That would have been useful back when my son was a few days old and they needed to find a vein. They had to bring down an ultrasound machine, and had to keep looking for usable vein. There were multiple failed attempts, each one painful.
Edit: YouTube link to a transilluminator being used - beware the video does have an unhappy child in it
Note that the signal to noise ratio will be very low in a newborn, smaller humans means smaller vessels and less blood pressure. If it was my child I would much rather have an ultrasound guided cannulation then to trust this device.
The reality is that although it looks very flashy it will have limited use other than maybe training very junior nurses/doctors.
They couldn't use the veinfinder on her due to her vessels being so small to insert a IV.
After multiple frustrating failed attempts by the nursing staff during a change, they had to bring in NICU specialist.
All this to note that it is a genuine skill and if this helps, great, but don’t go helping the lowest common denominator that doesn’t deserve it. Can’t hit a vein? Give it to someone who can, immediately.
My high school had a phlebotomy track after you took anatomy physiology and I was able to get good enough to get my first job at Scott & White here in Texas. I then used those skills to work 30 hours a weekend (Friday - Sunday) to pay for college. The hardest part was the field work, nursing homes, if you could not get the blood there was no backup like at the hospital so it typically forced bad techs to go hunting for a different job. I would go home and practice on various speaker cable to get the feel for hard veins. This job was filled with pride, challenges, character building traits, and it paid the bills. $17.5/hr back in years 98->20, was far better than most of my friends jobs. No complaints here and a lot of respect for the craft.
Without this job I likely would not have been able to start my software company 22 years ago.
Fascinating story and I’m sad to think 22 years later it’s probably about the same pay rate. Honorable gig. Nice to hear how it can be a steeping stone for use of talent as well!
Ps - I heard Chuck kind of came up with Fight Club while driving cancer patients and other terminal patients to appointments when not working as a diesel mechanic.
They recently got one of these at a clinic someone very close to me attends regularly. Even skilled nurses can struggle to find usable veins when treating folks who’ve had many needles put in over the years; in those cases using this saves a great deal of time and pain for everyone involved.