Helping ICU Patients Walk

Undergraduate biomedical engineering students, at the Whiting School of Engineering at John Hopkins University, were challenged to design something that would allow rehab to start while patients are still in the ICU. This would be advantageous so that the patients would not gain more physical complications while having to lie in bed for extended periods of time. This is such a challenge because, for an ICU patient to get up requires the aid of four people, since they must remain connected to intravenous lines, heart monitors, ventilators, etc. and are unsteady on their feet. The students combated this problem by designing the MOVER, a walker system that allows room for all of the connections, contains a safety seat, and requires aid from only two people. I found the safety seat to be particularly interesting. The students designed this seat since many ICU patients are weak and are subject to weak spells at any given moment. With this seat right behind the patient's walking area and connected to the walker, the patient can easily fall back onto the seat if anything should go wrong. They also designed the seat to be made out of bulletproof nylon, which is sturdy and resists infection. The MOVER has been in the process of design for the past year and is now in the stage of being tested at the hospital and being redesigned with feedback from current specialists. After making final tests, the students hope for it to be incorporated into the hospital at John Hopkins and spread further. I found this article to be particularly interesting since the design was created by undergraduate students. It described the challenges that they faced and all of the solutions that they had to find in order to develop a product that met the needs of the current problem.

http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/0908web/wholly.html#icu

Kathryn West
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