Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering students Erica Jantho, Hanlin Wan and Swarnali Sengupta test their team’s ICU MOVER, a mobility aid designed to safely ambulate critical care patients.
Photo by Will Kirk
“How TECHNOLOGY improve PATIENT CARE ?”. Well, here is an example - A smart medical device has been designed by a group of biomedical engineering undergraduates at Johns Hopkins University which allows seriously ill ICU patients to get off from their beds and walk around, while they’re still attached to essential monitoring and life-support equipment.
- The device is called ICU MOVER Aid.
- Allow ICU patients to leave their beds and walk.
- Most parts of the ICU MOVER have been built of steel.
- It has a walker type framework which allows the patient to stand on the floor and move around.
- At the behind of the position where the patient’s going to stand, there is a fabric seat attached to the frame, providing more protection to the patient, in case of an emergency.
- Moreover, there is also a tower as a separate component, which houses all the essential medical equipment needed by the ICU patient.
- Tower consists of two oxygen tanks, a cardiac monitor, intravenous infusion pump and a ventilator
- Advantage 1: Reduce the number of staff members needed to accompany a walking ICU patient.
- Before: Four staff members were needed
- Now with ICU MOVER: Only two staff members are needed.
- Advantage 2: ICU MOVER is small enough to maneuver through ICU’s narrow hallways.
- Advantage 3: Safe and efficient - Enables safe patient handling for critical care nurses.
- Advantage 4: Improve patient’s recovery
The student-designed ICU MOVER includes a wheeled tower that carries important medical equipment. The devices, top to bottom, are a cardiac monitor, an intravenous infusion pump and a portable ventilator.
Photo by Will Kirk
More about the design from the news release:
This final version features a walker type framework, similar to devices that some frail or elderly people use to get around. Immediately behind the patient, however, a fabric seat is attached to the frame so that a tired patient can sit down. The seat can also “catch” a patient who abruptly collapses because of a medical problem. “We made the seat out of ballistic nylon because we didn’t want it to rip,” said Lerman, 22, from Delray Beach, Fla. “It’s durable, and it’s easy to clean for infection-control purposes.”
As a separate component, the prototype features a tower designed to accommodate two oxygen tanks and three medical devices: a cardiac monitor, intravenous infusion pumps to provide medications, and a ventilator to support breathing. Despite all of the equipment attached to it, the MOVER prototype was small enough to maneuver through the Medical ICU’s narrow hallways, although using it in the ICU patient rooms, which are particularly small, proved to be more challenging. In terms of improved efficiency, the inventors said, the MOVER requires only two hospital staff members to accompany the walking patient, compared with four staff under the earlier system.
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