Description

Six newly designed devices for Smart Home for the Elderly (33 students) come out from the projects in 2012 and seven designed lower limb training devices (35 students) come out in 2011. The students gained the basic knowledge of planning, designing, developing and presenting a bioinstrumentation device

Intended Educational Value

• To guide students to design a bioinstrumentation device with their own innovation.
• To help students learn the process of planning, developing, and evaluating in the bioinstrumentation design.
• To make students capable of exploring any new bioinstrumentation device appeared in the future.

Example of Application

In the course of Principles of Bioinstrumentation (HTI 3112) in 2010-12 (this subject was offered in Year 2 Semester 2), students registered in this course completed the whole design process of the innovative bioinstrumentation. There were in total 35 and 33 students in the class of 2010-11 and 2011-12 respectively, and they formed 6-7 groups (5-6 students each). Each group was required to design a “new lower limb training device for disabled and/ or elderly persons” and a “Smart Home for the Elderly”. All groups successful completed their design and prototypes on time. The final evaluation on the performance of each group was conducted by the course leader, instructors and the external healthcare professionals, Mr Charles Lai (Department Manager, Physiotherapy Department, Shatin Hospital) in 2011 and Ms Eva Sun (Occupational Therapist) in 2012.

In total, 6 new devices for Smart Home for the Elderly and 7 lower limb training devices were designed and developed. Through the design and development process, students gained the basic knowledge of planning, designing, developing and presenting to other people the bioinstrumentation devices which were designed by them.

Evaluation/ Comments

Feedback was collected from the students on the bioinstrumentation design. Data show that all students were satisfied with the organization of this project. All of them agreed that the project provided opportunities for creativity and innovation and they could understand how their ideas arrived at a practical healthcare device. They also agreed that this project offered a good learning experience in their course of study in BME. They agreed that this project allowed them to demonstrate their abilities of designing a bioinstrumentation related to BME that met users’ needs under constraints. It is also found that most of the students were more motivated to learn this subject after this project. Mr Charles Lai (Department Manager, Physiotherapy Department) and Ms Eva Sun (occupational therapist) enjoyed the class and fully appreciated the effort and creativity from our students.
 

Remarks

If you would like to know more about these devices, please contact the project leader via email k.y.tong@polyu.edu.hk.