Hello there, readers! Welcome back to my blog as I continue to share my experiences during my clinical rotations in Costa Rica. Last week, Travis and I continued our journey at the Hospital Nacional de Niños (HNN) under the guidance of Dr. Roger Vargas. We have also expanded our clinical rotations into design theory-crafting and testing at Hospital Clinica Biblica’s Innovation Center.
At this innovation center, Travis and I are able to work in environments that provide us with the resources and guidance necessary to take on the prototyping section of this project.
Over the past four weeks, our team had the opportunity to shadow Dr. Vargas at HNN, where we worked towards identifying a specific clinical need and creating a needs statement. Our focus was on pediatric bionic hands, aiming to develop a more intuitive, user-friendly, and affordable mechanism. In this blog post, we’ll share our journey and the needs statement we drafted.
We chose to undertake the bionic hand project due to the opportunities it presents. With a specific patient population in need of improved upper-arm prostheses, we can address their unique challenges and tailor our solution to meet their requirements. The urgency to enhance the quality of life for individuals with upper-arm limb differences further motivated our choice. Additionally, the project is financially attainable, and by leveraging existing technologies, we can create a cost-effective solution that is accessible to a wider range of patients. Furthermore, the lack of funding for upper-arm prostheses under the CCSS (Costa Rican Social Security) fund highlights the need for our intervention. By undertaking this project, we aim to fill this gap and provide a solution that is urgently needed and financially feasible, ultimately making a meaningful impact on the lives of individuals with upper-arm limb differences.
Our time at HNN allowed us to closely observe Dr. Vargas and gain valuable insights into the challenges faced by young patients utilizing bionic hands. We witnessed the importance of promoting proper patient forearm muscle plasticity, as it directly impacts their ability to effectively operate the bionic hands and achieve a higher quality of life.
Through our observations and discussions with Dr. Vargas, we recognized a pressing need for a more physiologically intuitive mechanism to operate pediatric bionic hands. The existing methods often lack user-friendliness and can be costly, hindering patient access and impeding forearm muscle plasticity development.
Based on our experiences and research, we developed the following needs statement: “There exists a need for a more physiologically intuitive, user-friendly, and inexpensive mechanism to operate pediatric bionic hands in order to promote proper patient forearm muscle plasticity and improve patient quality of life.”
Now, moving forward, the next 4 weeks will focus on these sections of the internship…
In the next four weeks, our project takes a significant step forward as we focus on downselecting needs statements, conducting market analysis, performing IP analysis, engaging in user testing, and creating low to medium-fidelity prototypes. This blog post will highlight the key activities we’ll be undertaking during this period.
We will carefully evaluate and prioritize the needs statements, selecting the most critical ones to guide our efforts in the project. A thorough market analysis will provide insights into competitors, trends, and potential opportunities, allowing us to navigate the market landscape effectively. We’ll conduct an IP analysis to ensure our innovation is unique and legally protected, considering existing patents that may affect our project. Through user testing, we will gather feedback from target users and stakeholders, refining our ideas based on their input and ensuring our solutions meet their needs. Creating low to medium-fidelity prototypes will allow us to bring our ideas to life, evaluate the feasibility, and refine our designs.