IUPUI instructor receives patent for first aid mannequin called ‘Indy Mak’

By Rich Schneider

The mannequin design created by McGinnis was awarded U.S. patent number 6,530,783 on April 11.

Months and months of testing, a research report, lengthy design descriptions and a legal firm were required for the patent, but any third grader can put the mannequin McGinnis designed together in minutes with common household materials.

Necessity, said McGinnis, a part-time first aid instructor with the Department of Physical Education at IUPUI and full-time program development manager for the Indianapolis Chapter of the American Red Cross, was the mother of this invention.

The Red Cross chapter regularly trained youngsters in basic aid techniques using mannequins costing up to $1,000.

Because of their cost, children usually had to share a mannequin while practicing rescue breathing or learning how to aid a choking victim, slowing the training process. After each training session, the faces of the mannequins had to be cleaned and the airways replaced. In addition, if the youngsters weren’t supervised well, the mannequins could be damaged. Due to wear and tear, the mannequins had to be replaced about every five years.

A plea by a Red Cross chapter training director to find a solution to the costly use of mannequins led McGinnis to create Indy Mak, a virtually cost-free mannequin that is assembled from a gallon milk jug, a two-litter plastic bottle, a plastic baggy, and newspaper.

The mannequin is named after her father, who died not long before she sat down to create a mannequin. "With the name McGinnis, my dad was always called Mak."

McGinnis likes to tinker. "If something is broken, I try to figure out how to fix it," she said. She attributes the "creative juices" that led to the design of Indy Mak to the memories of her father.

"Indy Mak isn’t pretty, but he is functional," McGinnis said.

The gallon jug serves as the head of Indy Mak, the bottle its torso, and the baggie is the mannequin’s lungs. The newspapers, she notes, provides resistance and rebound.

After cutting nose and mouth holes, youngsters color and decorate a face template that is then attached to the head. "They can decorate it any manner they wish and are limited only by their imaginations."

Indy Mak takes about five to 10 minutes for the children to assemble. When the class ends, the kids get to take their own mannequin home.

McGinnis assigned the rights to the patent to the Red Cross chapter, which now sells the design for use with a web-based basic first aid training class. To date, the plans for Indy Mak have been purchased around the world, including Turkey, Norway, Canada, India, Hong Kong, Ethiopia and Ireland.