The rehabilitation process often takes far longer than necessary because patients carry out the required exercises incorrectly. As rehabilitation frequently takes place at home, it is difficult for a doctor to supervise the process and to intervene when needed. In recent months, six international teams of students tackled the question, put forward by the University Medical Center Utrecht (UMC Utrecht), of: ‘How can technology help in the recovery of a patient?’ They designed high-tech appliances to support patients with their rehabilitation at home and give the doctor online insight in the process.
The prototypes of these innovative rehabilitation appliances will be on show at TU Delft on Friday 12 June 2009.
Two examples:
- Wrist operation: A patient with a wrist injury or who has had a wrist operation has to practise a lot with the wrist in question, but must exercise it sufficiently without overtaxing it. One of the teams designed an appliance the size of a shoe box that accurately records how much and how intensively the patient exercises his or her wrist. The prototype is connected to the Internet by means of the computer. This enables the doctor to see precisely how and how much the patient is exercising and can give advice where necessary. "The exercise does, of course, have to be fun too, since staying motivated is often a problem", according to José Maas, student of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) at TU Delft. "So we link it to a game of Tetris. You steer and turn the Tetris cubes with wrist movements. It is amusing and you recover from your wrist operation at the same time."
- Back complaints: Another team designed hidden sensors in garments to combat backache. The device measures the position of the back. As soon as the patient feels pain he can indicate this by pressing a pain button on a wristband. This enables him or her to ascertain the positions to be avoided. Vibration sensors warn the patient against the painful posture.
Online cooperation The teams consisted of students from universities in England, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Switzerland and the Netherlands (Delft). The students cooperated online. They only met up with one another at UMC Utrecht for a week to build, test and present the prototypes. The design exercise, which has been entitled E-GPR (European Global Product Realisation), is a TU Delft initiative and it takes place annually. This year the ‘commissioning party’ was UMC Utrecht, which gladly seized the unique opportunity to explore the possibilities in this area with enthusiastic young students. The participating students went through the entire design process. This meant that they collected information in all the countries concerned on the wishes and application possibilities and evaluated many design ideas. Ultimately, each team chose a single concept to elaborate into a working prototype. If solutions thought up by students look promising in terms of further development and distribution, UMC Utrecht has the infrastructure to market these ideas with commercial parties. In this way, people with technical and medical backgrounds work together to improve healthcare.
For more information:
Linda Minnen, UMC Utrecht media relations officer,
+31 (0)6 – 2197 3415
Angeline Westbroek, Marketing and Communications Manager IDE, +31 (0)6 – 1401 5032.
Niels Moes, TU Delft project manager, +31 (0)6 – 1596 6041