ICU bed

Client: Piyavar Co. (2008)

ICU bed

A large number of existing hospital beds in our country are very old and they do not have enough facilities and safety equipment. Mental and physical needs of sensitive patients are not fulfilled completely with using these beds in recovery. This issue causes a lot of problems for patients and hospital staff especially, nurses. Problems including cultural incompatibility of ICU bed and users, low safety of beds and demanding movement of patients. ICU beds are one of the most equipped and sensitive health care facilities for patients who are suffering from critical conditions. Providing a suitable space for critical and particular conditions of patients, accessing various health care and curing facilities, adaptability with a myriad of patients with different physical characteristics are requirements which makes “designing ICU beds” processes difficult and challenging.

On the other hand, designers have to design ICU beds which are producible and manufactured easily. Also, designed beds should have proper and high quality. This issue is considered in all components of this ICU bed. These considerations help to decrease the final price of the product.

Challenges of designing the product

Observation of users in real situations of life to perceive their behaviors and the ways they interact with products can provide useful information for designers. To improve or manufacture a new product, observing and hearing problems and issues and interaction between users and products are the first primary steps to start design processes and achieving the proper design solutions. The most important issue in designing ICU beds is the huge number of parameters which must be considered by designers from beginning of the process until production. To exemplify, different parameters such as ergonomic design, price, safety, standards of designing beds (FDA,) designing the body of ICU beds, user interaction of beds’ controllers are related systematically. The overlap of aforementioned parameters is the biggest challenge of designing this product.

Properties of the final design

Designers observed the possible damages related to existing ICU beds and found the reasons and roots of these damages in the design project. A separate diagram was drawn for every damage in this analysis which helped the design team to achieve the initial reasons for every damage at the end of every subject. Background information correlated to these damages and hurts were gained with interviewing with staff who worked in Tehran heart center, Kasra hospital in Karaj and Hashemi Nezhad hospital. Also, this information was attained with reading reports of quality control department of hospitals and studying sources about hurts and safety of ICU beds and personal observations of the design team. At the end of this process, achievable results were presented as collected parameters with considerations including abilities and facilities of producers and manufacturing costs of conceptual designs. After the assessment of designs and selecting the final design, the final design entered detail design and design for manufacturing phases.