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Innovative product design from Russia

Design of medical equipment

The development of high-technology medical devices has become one of the most popular themes in the world design. Last years, in the West were developed a lot of products with deeply elaborated, ergonomic and technological designs of medical equipment which won in different design competitions all over the world.

Russian device “Sonomed 500”, design, interface and structure of which were developed by specialists of SmirnovDesign can be ranked as a real breakthrough in the area of developing medical equipment in Russia.

Design

The initial stage of working on the project was conducting design research aimed at identifying peculiarities in medical personnel’s work with similar devices. All manipulations with the devices and the sequence of actions were analyzed, along with identifying “zones of inconvenience” in respect to the controlling, maintaining and, if necessary, repairing of the medical devices. Research conducted showed that interface of such devices requires considerable minimization and simplification. So, specialists of SmirnovDesign worked out an innovative control conception aimed at the intuitive understanding of consistency between electronic interface developed by Spectromed and elements of control panel. In particular, the idea of developing control panel was in identifying and designing the following ergonomic zones of manipulation with the device: central, containing the main working element – rollerball, and secondary, including all the other elements. By this, proximity of locating these elements to the central zone is defined by the frequency of their use and functionality. The appropriateness of these solutions was maintained by successful trials under real conditions and highly evaluated by specialists of Spectromed.

Ergonomics

In addition to successfully solved problems concerning ergonomics of the device, designers of SmirnovDesign have succeeded in enriching functional possibilities of the new device which, in contrast with previous models able to only process signals from two sensors, capable of maintaining six sensors at the same time.

The solutions concerning the structure of the new device can also be considered innovative: it is really compact and mobile and easy in relocation. Besides, the architecture of the device allows easily accessing system unit and its dismantling. Another interesting engineering solution implemented by specialists of SmirnovDesign concerned designing highlighted keyboard – this should facilitate work with such devices which usually occurs in the darkened conditions.

One of the main tasks of the project was to decrease investments in tooling. To address this aim, design-engineers of SmirnovDesign applied technologies which do not require expensive tooling: vacuum molding, metal bending, film keyboard. Also, there was foreseen a possibility of using silicon buttons in the future.

The level of the developmental work fulfilled by specialists of SmirnovDesign has exceeded expectations of the client. It is obvious that design is worth to invest – to confirm this, the newly developed design will participate in 15th International Exhibition of Health Care, Medical Engineering and Pharmaceuticals – Zdravookhraneniye 2005.

Client: Spectromed(Russia)

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