Education – Design for Wellbeing

Two wellbeing projects in Extreme PSS project course

Tobias Larsson — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 11:30:34 +0000

Students in the MSc programmes in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Management and Engineering have completed their final product-service innovation projects in the course Extreme Product-Service Innovation. The students have been working on different challenges relating to construction equipment and health care in projects that are aimed at allowing the students to use their engineering skills and tools “In Real Life” with real corporate partners, thus preparing them for their coming work life.

For this batch two teams choose to work with the Design for Wellbeing “angle” together with Blue Science Park and Region Blekinge.

Extreme Product-Service Innovation class 2018/19.

The Projects

This year’s challenges have come from Region Blekinge (formerly County Council Blekinge), Blue Science Park, Dynapac and Volvo Construction equipment. A major focus has been on how to design and enable future concepts for health care and construction respectively, given that more capabilities for digitalization are becoming available.

Blue Science Park

The focus of this project has been on increased independence and wellbeing for people who are in need of increased assistance but still not eligible for full home care initiatives. Some solutions can be attractive enough and make people’s lives better so that they want to consume the solutions (whether it’s products and/or services) privately. Based on needfinding, the students have come up with a solution called C-Connect that consists of a watch band that has sensors and a button. The sensors will monitor information regarding a person’s health status. The information that will be monitored is body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, and blood oxygen. The button will be an emergency button, that the seniors can use to contact someone when needed. Coupled with this the students have developed an app that supports the integration with different stakeholders.

C-Connect solution.

Region Blekinge

The focus of the two Region Blekinge projects was on Mobile Teams and enabling the Care Ward to be in the patients’ homes. With this approach, the idea is both to make better use of resources and also to make care better in quality and more comfortable for the patients who should not need to go to the hospital unless it is absolutely necessary.

With the Mobile teams project created a platform that supports the mobile teams in planning and management of the activities that move out of the hospital. By streamlining multiple processes and collecting all activities under one combined platform the concept will increase both efficiency and patient’s desirability. The solution combines capabilities in logistics, data collection, and digital communication within a smart and easy to use the platform.

Mobile teams interface.

With the Care Ward at Home project, the students have devised a concept called LARM, which is a system of sensors that collect data from the user and communicate to the user via an app. The data is also sent to a monitoring center at the hospital that evaluates the results. By alleviating the patients from having to go to the hospital and instead of remaining in their homes, there is more space cleared up at the hospital for the patients who are more in emergency conditions instead.

LARM interface.

For more information see below site:

Extreme Product-Service Innovation 2018/19 completed

TAGS: blue science parkBTH christian johansson christian johansson askling course project education epsi extreme product service innovation extreme pss innovation ie Landstinget Blekinge Marco Bertoni PSS PSS EI PSS Extreme Innovation PSSEI student project techacc

C-connect – The future of medical monitoring

Tobias Larsson — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 09:15:51 +0000

Challenge: A solution that delays the need of help from the home care in Karlskrona

Solution: In the future the population of seniors is expected to grow. This is a problem for the society since the workers will have to take care of more seniors. Therefore a solution that delays the need of help from the home care is necessary. When examine current problems among seniors, the project team found two common safety issues. The first one is that seniors felt more safe when they knew that someone was checking up on them, to know that the person is alright. The second one is that seniors felt more safe if they could contact someone when needed.

The solution was a watch band that have sensors and a button. The sensors will monitor information regarding a person’s health status. The information that will be monitored is body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar and blood oxygen. This to fulfill the first issue. The button will be an emergency button, that the seniors can use to contact someone when needed. This to fulfill the second issue.

TAGS: blue science parkBTH dfw ehealth Healthcare home care Landstinget Blekinge Medical Monitoring region blekinge security

LARM system – At home monitoring system

Tobias Larsson — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 08:58:35 +0000

Challenge: To help creative innovative solutions for Landstinget Blekinge for patients to get at home healthcare / solutions for mobile teams.

Solution: Sensors that collect data from the user and communicate to the user via an app. The data is also sent to a monitoring central at the hospital that evaluates the results.

Impact: By removing the patients from the hospital to their home, there is more space cleared up at the hospital for the patients who are more in emergency conditions instead. The patients that stay from home, get to feel “less sick” due to the fact that they get to stay home.

TAGS: BTHdata dfw ehealth health app Landstinget Blekinge monitoring systems region blekinge sensors

Landstinget health care at home – Efficiency and connectivity of mobile teams

Tobias Larsson — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 09:18:34 +0000

Challenge: Understanding the core issue and today’s drawbacks in the mobile teams.

Solution: By streamlining multiple processes and collecting all activities under one combined platform the concept will understandably increase both efficiency and patient’s desirability. The solution combines of beneficial advancements in logistics, data collection and digital communication within a smart and easy to use platform.

TAGS: BTHdesign thinking dfw Emergency care Healthcare Homecare in real life Landstinget Blekinge Mobile teams mt2556 prototyping Smart Logistics

WeCare – Från studentprojekt till bolag

Tobias Larsson — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 18:34:57 +0000

WeCare startades som ett studentprojekt på Blekinge Tekniska Högskola (BTH) med en ide om hur man kan reducera antalet vårdrelaterade infektioner inom sjukvården. Med stöd av bland annat Blue Science Park har idén fått testats på två sjukhus i Blekinge.

Läs mer på: https://www.bluesciencepark.se/ehalsa/article/wecare-fran-studentprojekt-till-bolag/

TAGS: blekinge institute of technologyBTH innovation wecare

Industry 4.0, Nakajima Test, Elderly healthcare: Cross-disciplinary projects in the yearly Project Course for Exchange Students.

Tobias Larsson — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 11:40:08 +0000

Two months to apply in “real life” what has been learned during the years of university education, starting from a plan to the delivery of a final solution. This was the task the international students participating in the MT1490 yearly project course. Three teams of students, have on January 10^th presented the results of multidisciplinary research and development projects run under the supervision of four teachers from PDRL: Alessandro Bertoni, Marco Bertoni, Azad Syed Chowdhery and Shafiqul Islam.

TAGS: Alessandro BertoniAzad Syed Chowdhery BTH education exchange students ie Industry 4.0 innovation Marco Bertoni Md Shafiqul Islam MT1490

Wellbeing student projects in BTH course

Tobias Larsson — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 11:24:13 +0000

For their final projects before their master thesis, students from BTH’s masters programmes in Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Management and Engineering, and Sustainable Product-Service System Innovation (MSPI) are given challenges from real industrial companies to solve. The course is a central part of BTH’s mantra “In Real Life” readying them for their oncoming work life.

For this year two projects specifically choose to go in the Design for Wellbeing direction.

Check-It

The Check-It team started out with exploring ways of improving patient experience in emergency rooms with the help of vein scanners. Though the needfinding phase they zoomed out to a product-service system view of assisting patients in navigating the long queues that are common in modern healthcare. By being able to check in to the emergency room already from home the patient can, in some less urgent cases, prepare the staff for their arrival and allow for a better planning of their meeting with the doctor. Sometimes one emergency room could be overloaded, while others have better capacity, which could allow patients to find the most suitable place to go to. Of course, for urgent cases patients would still need to come in as soon as possible.

Check-it prototype

Pro-Health

The Pro-Health team were given the challenge to explore the possibilities and needs relating to the opportunity of doing some of their health measurements either from home or from distributed check-up rooms. The students have designed a system that allows users that are well and healthy to proactively manage their wellbeing by use of apps and a process for managing the health-related information and the interactions with health care expertise. The app includes connections with measuring devices whose values are uploaded to their personal journal and an AI doctor can provide suggestions and feedback on appropriate actions to take.

Discussions about Pro-Health simulation model

More information at the below site:

Extreme PSS Innovation 2017/18 completed

TAGS: blekinge institute of technologyBTH christian johansson Marco Bertoni PSS Extreme Innovation student projects

Rullstolsanpassat städsläp – 2017

Tobias Larsson — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 19:31:59 +0000

Ett vanligt problem för personer med funktionsnedsättningar som sitter i rullstol är att komma ut på arbetsmarknaden.

Syftet med projektet var att anpassa en skurmaskin så att den går att köras och hanteras av personer sittandes i elrullstolar. Det rullstolsanpassade städsläpet är tänkt att kopplas samman med redan existerande rullstol för att sedan köras runt och skura golv. Skursläpet är tänkt till de miljöer som i dagsläget städas med vanliga skurmaskiner.

Genomfördes i kursen “MT1459 Projektkurs 2” vid Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, handledare Andreas C. Larsson (andreas.larsson@bth.se)

TAGS: 2017BTH mt1459 projektkurs 2 rullstol släp städning

Designing for Lymphedema patients

Tobias Larsson — Tue, 23 May 2017 11:55:47 +0000

In the Design Thinking course, students from the MSPI-program and the Mechanical Engineering MSc program have explored issues relating to diagnosis and treatment of Lymphedema. Based on need analysis, ideation, and a prototyping approach, the students have developed concepts for how to address these issues, focusing on merging user desirability, with feasibility and viability from a business perspective.

The project has been initiated by and performed in collaboration with Blue Science Park and the SICAHTproject. Lymphedema disease provides one of the opportunities for innovation within the healthcare sector, which has been identified in an extensive mapping of needs that are yet to be fulfilled to a satisfactory level, given opportunities that comes with modern technologies and E-health.

Lymphedema is an illness that frequently affects people who has gone through cancer treatments. It is important to discover and begin effective treatment already in the early stages to manage the most severe effects of the illness. Current methods rely to a great extent on access to scarce resources within the healthcare system. Therefore, the students have investigated if there are opportunities to make identification and treatment more independent and effortless for users to manage on their own.

Several projects within “Lymphedema area” was explored, see all info below.

Designing for Lymphedema patients (MT2547)

Humanitär innovation vid BTH

Tobias Larsson — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 11:20:01 +0000

Institutionen för Maskinteknik vid BTH har en stark forskningsprofil inom teknisk produktutveckling; hållbar produktinnovation, främst med koppling till områden som flyg, rymd, fordon, transport samt tillverkande industri i allmänhet. Sedan ett år tillbaka har profilen utökats till att även innefatta tillämpningar inom humanitär innovation.

Telekonsultation inom PrimCareIT-projektet

Professor Tobias Larsson är styrelsemedlem i Röda Korsets Högskola (RKH) som utbildar sjuksköterskor med kompetens och beredskap för globalt arbete samt bidrar till sjukvårdens utveckling i Sverige. Inom RKH bedrivs även forskning som passar bra med Maskintekniks profil, speciellt inom tematiska området “Hälsa och teknisk utveckling” (http://www.rkh.se/sv/forskning/). Tobias historik med flertalet projekt inom Tillämpad Hälsoteknik, och Design for Wellbeing bidrar även till att humanitär innovation är en naturlig utveckling. Även Dr. Christian Johansson har erfarenhet från det närliggande Design for Wellbeing-området, bland annat genom deltagande i ett projekt om hälsoövervakning på distans, tillsammans med Intel.

Autoklav för sterilisering av kirurgiska instrument.

Andreas Larsson, docent i Maskinteknik och innovationsledare, delar sin tid mellan BTH och Läkare Utan Gränsers innovationsenhet (MSF Sweden Innovation Unit), där han leder och deltar i såväl konkreta produkt- och tjänsteutvecklingsprojekt som processutvecklingprojekt med syfte att utveckla en mer innovativ kultur inom en av världens största medicinska humanitära organisationer. Exempelvis är Andreas projektledare för utvecklingen av en s k autoklav, vilket i princip är en ångkokare som med hjälp av upphettad vattenånga förbättrar steriliseringen av kirurgiska instrument och textilier för att minska risken för infektioner. Läs mer om Andreas och hans kollegors arbete inom innovationsenheten i Läkare Utan Gränsers magasin Direkt #1 2016 (s.20-23). Enheten har även bidragit till en ny bok som publiceras av Nesta på temat innovation och internationell utveckling, ladda ner boken här: Innovation in International Development: Navigating the Paths and Pitfalls (s. 83-96).

Tillämpad hälsoteknik, Design for Wellbeing och humanitär innovation är tydliga exempel på innovationsområden vid BTH där människans välbefinnande står i fokus.

Som student innebär detta att du kommer att kunna använda dina kunskaper i projekt med humanitär innovation som fokus! Forskningsmässigt är det ett intressant och utmanande område att tillämpa vår forskning inom.

TAGS: BTHdesign for wellbeing humanitär innovation läkare utan gränser röda korset