Mass Customization of Medical Devices for Quality of Life

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • McKertcher, Adam

• Healthcare is an inherently risky sector for innovation. In particular, breakthrough innovations pose an even greater risk for investment and potential consequences for the end user. These factors make the healthcare sector inherently risk averse, resulting in medical devices that become outdated. This research highlights the maker movement as an opportunity to reevaluate how medical devices are perceived, and presents Quality of Life as a factor to focus on in order to encourage breakthrough innovation. By employing tools of the maker movement, and designing a new business model using a lean approach, this research assess new technologies as a way of empowering medical device users to take ownership of their devices. The final design project for this thesis involves a custom sit-ski, which would disrupt the traditional methods for building and distributing custom sit-skis and athletic wheelchairs.

• Date created

  2016-01-11

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Strategic Design
  • Lean Startup
  • Business Model Canvas
  • The Maker Movement
  • Emotional Durability
  • Industrial Design
  • Mass Customization
  • Ergonomics
  • 3D Printing
  • Rapid Prototyping

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R37S7HT7Z

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International