General information about Pressure Ulcer：

Pressure ulcers, also known as pressure sores or bed sores, are localized damage to the skin and/or underlying tissue that usually occur over a bony prominence as a result of usually long-term pressure, or pressure in combination with shear or friction. 

How does pressure ulcer develop? Why it is dangerous?

Pressure ulcer is injuries to the skin and underlying tissue, primarily caused by prolonged pressure on the skin. It starts damaging the skin surface before it goes deeper. It is rarely noticeable especially at stage one and stage two. It destructs layer by layer, from the skin to fat, muscle, and even to bones which is risky, which might highly possibly brings complications.

Pressure Ulcer has been a huge issue in the medical area, as it affects by skin color so that difficult to be solved in time, for instance, SDTI and Unstageable.

Which part of the body does it appear?

It happens more often to patients who’s bedridden (including wheelchairs), and it appears to those places where has less fat protection, back of the head, shoulder blades, hips, tailbone, ankles and etc. It depends on the position and how much extra pressure is taken at the specific spot of the body.

The complexity of pressure ulcer

PU is avoidable but has particularity in various cases. It’s more common to elderly people who’s over 70 years old, however, the reasons what cause pressure ulcer is complicated. The patient who’s older than 70, is also possibly get pressure ulcer if the patient has mobility problems, has poor nutrition, has bad conditions which means has other health issues, incontinence issue or even mental problems. 

The facts about PU

Existing products

There are medical equipments to help moving patients, reducing pressure, skincare and etc. Main problems of those equipments are that, most of them are expensive, and can’t be customize to a customized product to fit ONE patient’s need. Moreover, it still needs professional cares from others so that the patient can be well taken care of.

Disease progression scenarios

The possible scenarios are taken from the interview.

Hospital: Pressure Ulcer Group, Liyang People’s Hospital, Hangzhou local Community Hospital, Haining People Hospital and etc.

In-depth user map/Stakeholder

The PressureSaver and the system will improve patients and their families lives. And in a larger scale, it will also be helpful to improve the efficiency at healthcare center and hospital, meanwhile prevent patients from getting severe PU.

Through the user map, it is noticeable that family members plays an important role in all situations. The stakeholders will be the patients themselves, but also health carers and family members as they are the person who’s helping the patient. So the environments can be homes, nursing home or old aged home. moreover, it can be scaled to be beneficial for doctors and nurses. 

Design opportunities / Brainstorming

I have been in touch with doctors and nurses in the hospital, then I found some insights and factors. These are financial ability which affects the number of equipments, facilities and service, professional turnover, knowledge about PU. Both in hospital and out of hospital. With various range of situations, the project can be led into 3 directions based on the specific problem.

Technology assessment

The best solution is to use ultrasound - the main problem of pressure ulcer is tissue being damaged what is not visible or noticeable.

Currently, the most common way is nurses using their experience (skin temp, color, press to text turgor, etc.) and using assessment form to define pressure ulcer.

The intention of this project is to transfer the skills to a device which can help in increasing the efficiency in the hospital and more beneficial for people to use at home (out of hospitals), as it doesn’t require any knowledge to use.

Design concept, what does the product do?

The product will be a medical device that detects and collects live data from the patient. And the data will be transferred to carer’s mobile product, it gives an alarm when the patient’s conditions get worse or if the patient needs help to improve any of the indicators.

Ideation 1 - A set of wearable devices

The first possible solution is s set of wearable devices what detects pressure intake, moisture, blood oxygen and flow, the main factors of pressure ulcer.

Technical test - To be continued

Technically, Arduino and Processing are the main technical solutions so far to achieve the device detecting the conditions of the patient.

Using scenario

Illustrating how does the product work.

Patient app - the mobile terminal

Mobile terminal is set for family members or health carer to provide help monitoring patient’s condition despite professional knowledge.

It keeps the live data, history, assessment and live chat with advisor, and more importantly, it gives in-time alarm to remind.