Abstract
The development of medical devices is becoming increasingly complex, with the advent of information technologies and continuous advances in micro and nanotechnologies. Moreover, the demands in terms of performance, costs and other requisites of these devices have also become stricter. If, on the one hand, the results are clearly positive for society in terms of better health services (and the arguable improvement of the quality of life), on the other hand, there is the need to involve people from a variety of fields in the development process, and the tasks of planning and coordinating the implementation of a development strategy are ever more paramount.
This chapter presents some considerations about the product development cycle and the need for multidisciplinary teams in the product design and development processes of medical devices. The work methods and communication channels within the team, and the organization and coordination of that team are discussed. Opinions regarding different aspects of the development process, collected from individuals involved in medical devices development projects, are described and analyzed. Finally, a case-study is presented of a university-industry project, involving healthcare providers, for the development of a new health support system comprised of different types of medical devices. This project encompassed all the stages of PDD up to the laboratory-stage and establishing the main requisites for industrial productification. The developed system was implemented and field-tested (some of the individuals involved in the field test have answered the previously mentioned questionnaire).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Zenios S et al (2009) Biodesign: the process of innovating new medical technologies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Alexander K, Clarkson J, Bishop D, Fox S (2002) Good design practice for medical devices and equipment: requirements capture. Engineering Design Centre. Cambridge University, Cambridge
Simoes R, Sampaio AM (2009) Exceeding problem solving expectations in industrial design under severely restricted specifications, IRF - integrity, reliability and failure: challenges and opportunities, p 445, ISBN 978-972-8826-22-2
Fernandez-Lopez H, Afonso JA, Correia JH, Simões R (2010) HM4All: a vital signs monitoring system based in spatially distributed zigBee networks. In: Proceedings of pervasive health 2010 – 4th international conference on pervasive computing technologies for healthcare, Munich, 22–25 Mar 2010
Fernandez LH, Afonso JA, Correia JH, Simões R (2009) Extended health visibility in the hospital environment. In: BioDevices 2009, pp 422–425
Pereira D, Moreira A, Simoes R (2010) Challenges on real-time monitoring of patients through the Internet. In: Proceedings of CISTI 2010, Santiago de Compostela – Spain, 16–19 June 2010
Sampaio M, Pontes AJ, Simoes R (2009) Analysis of product design and development methodologies towards a specific implementation for embedded microelectronics. In: Proceedings of IDEMI09, Porto, 14–15 Sept 2009
Fernandez LH, Macedo P, Afonso JA, Correia JH, Simões R (2009) Evaluation of the impact of the topology and hidden nodes in the performance of a ZigBee network. In: Lecture notes of the institute for computer sciences, social-informatics and telecommunications engineering vol 24 (S-Cube 2009), Pisa, pp 256–271
Pugh S (1991) Total design - integrated methods for successful product engineering. Addison-Wesley Pub Co, Wokingham
Simoes R, Sampaio AM (2008) Effect of technology-driven products in the future of product design and development. In: Proceedings of RPD 2008 – rapid product development, Oliveira de Azeméis, 29–30 Oct 2008
Cruz-Cunha MM, Tavares AJ, Simões R (eds) (2010) Handbook of research on developments in e-health and telemedicine: technological and social perspectives. Information Science Reference, Hershey
Holger K, Willig A (2005) Protocols and architectures for wireless sensor. Willey, Networks
Dorothy C et al (2008) Physiological signal monitoring in the waiting areas of an emergency room. In: Proceedings of the ICST 3rd international conference on body area networks, ICST, Tempe
Hande A et al (2006) Self-powered wireless sensor networks for remote patient monitoring in hospitals. Sensors 6(9):1102–1117
Lorincz K et al (2004) Sensor networks for emergency response: challenges and opportunities. IEEE Pervasive Comput 3(4):16–23
Kramp G, Kristensen M, Pedersen JF (2006) Physical and digital design of the blueBio biomonitoring system prototype to be used in emergency medical response. In: Pervasive Health
Tia G et al (2008) Wireless medical sensor networks in emergency response: implementation and pilot results. In: IEEE conference on technologies for homeland security
O’Donoughue N, Kulkarni S, Marzella D (2006) Design and implementation of a framework for monitoring patients in hospitals using wireless sensors in Ad Hoc configuration. In: 28th annual international conference of the IEEE EMBS, New York, pp 6449–6452
Kyriacou E et al (2007) m-Health e-Emergency systems: current status and future directions [wireless corner]. IEEE Antennas Propag 49(1):216–231
Dishongh TJ, McGrath M (2009) Wireless sensor networks for healthcare applications. Artech House, Norwood
Acknowledgments
Colleagues involved in the case-study, namely José A. Afonso, Higino Correia, Adriano Moreira, Joaquim Mendes, and students Helena Fernandez-López, Ana Carolina Matos, Duarte Pereira, and Bruno Fernandes. Clinical and financial support for the case-study has been provided by Grupo AMI - Assistência Médica Integral (Casa de Saúde de Guimarães, SA), Portugal, under the partnership established between this healthcare company and the University of Minho. Financial support was also provided by the MIT-Portugal program. The author also acknowledges the Foundation for Science and Technology, Lisbon, through the 3° Quadro Comunitário de Apoio and the POCTI and FEDER programs.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Simoes, R. (2012). Synergic Multidisciplinary Interactions for Design and Development of Medical Devices. In: Natal Jorge, R., Tavares, J., Pinotti Barbosa, M., Slade, A. (eds) Technologies for Medical Sciences. Lecture Notes in Computational Vision and Biomechanics, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4068-6_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4068-6_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4067-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4068-6
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)