Improving the Ergonomic working conditions of Ophthalmologists: Designing a solution that will improve the long-term wellbeing of Ophthalmologists by improving the physical ergonomics of their daily, work-related activities

In this master's thesis in collaboration with het Nederlands Oogheelkundig Gezelschap (NOG), or the Dutch ophthalmic society, I developed an industrial design concept to improve the ergonomic working conditions of Ophthalmologists.<br/><br/>25% of Dutch Ophthalmologists (surgical eye doctors) have suffered from musculoskeletal injuries (MSIs)...

Designing compression garments with integrated sensors for enhanced monitoring & treatment

Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death, representing 32% of all global deaths. The mainstay treatments are medical compression stockings (MCS) and physical activity. Although MCS has been shown to positively affect treatment and support disorder control (e.g. leg swelling), research shows incredibly low therapy compliance....

A framework for employing longitudinally collected multicenter electronic health records to stratify heterogeneous patient populations on disease history

Objective: To facilitate patient disease subset and risk factor identification by constructing a pipeline which is generalizable, provides easily interpretable results, and allows replication by overcoming electronic health records (EHRs) batch effects. Material and Methods: We used 1872 billing codes in EHRs of 102 880 patients from 12...

Localization of Medical Device Manufacturing in Low- and Middle-Income countries: A study to develop key drivers and inhibitors to shifting manufacturing and assembly of medical devices in Low and Middle income countries

The research was conducted looking into the possibilities of local manufacturing and assembly of medical devices in low and middle-income countries. Desktop research and expert interviews were conducted to learn the operations of medical devices (and other product) manufacturers. The interview process validated the literature study and also...

An ECG- and PPG-Based Wearable Atrial Fibrillation Detection Device: Signal Acquisition

When symptoms of atrial fibrillation (AF), a common cardiac arrhythmia, are experienced, a Holter monitor or event recorder is used for official diagnosis. Apart from the fact that these devices are experienced as inconvenient, AF can already manifest damage in a pre-symptomatic phase. This thesis is aimed at developing a method for recording...

Towards improved orthopaedic drilling at hard to reach bone sites: The design of a compact Self-Feeding Angled Drill Attachment (SFADA)

Bone drilling is a crucial part of orthopaedic surgery. Internal fixation is a ommon orthopaedic procedure that requires drilling to improve healing of bone fractures. Tight spaces around hard to reach bone fractures impede the surgeon during the procedure. As a result there is an increased risk of complications such as thermonecrosis, overshoot...

Evaluating Neural Text Simplification in the Medical Domain

Health literacy, i.e. the ability to read and understand medical text, is a relevant component of public health. Unfortunately, many medical texts are hard to grasp by the general population as they are targeted at highly-skilled professionals and use complex language and domain-specific terms. Here, automatic text simplification making text...

Testing of pressure piezoelectric sensors: For Momo Medical

In this thesis, a test device is designed for the company Momo Medical. Momo Medical is developing a system that can be used to prevent pressure ulcers and adding more functionality is being investigated. For this system they need a device to test the functionality of the six piezoelectric sensors that are used in their product. The sensors’...

Privacy-Preserving Collection and Retrieval of Medical Wearables Data

In recent years we have seen a rise in the amount of fitness tracking and self monitoring devices. These devices which often work in conjunction with a smartphone are becoming more accurate and are becoming widely adopted. This trend goes hand in hand with Electronic Health Care (e-health): the shift of health care to the digital domain. E...

Smart needles for percutaneous interventions

The development of advanced needles for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes such as ablation and brachytherapy in the liver has offered minimally invasive therapies to patients that were previously untreatable. This thesis focuses on accurate placement of such needles guided by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to maximize the effect of the...

Modeling nonlinear propagation of ultrasound through inhomogeneous biomedical media

The design and optimization of medical ultrasound modalities require a method for modeling the propagation of pressure wave fields through biomedical tissue. This method needs to be capable of modeling various phenomena, e.g. nonlinear propagation, attenuation, and scattering caused by arbitrary inhomogeneities in the acoustic properties of the...

Curvature Lines for Lesion Detection and Visualization in CT Colonography

In this thesis, we present an automatic polyp detection approach that integrates knowledge from flow visualization techniques. Our primary goal was to compute additional characteristic polyp features that improve the CAD performance of existing polyp detection approaches by eliminating found false-positive polyp candidates. We found that surface...

Design for the Mobile OR, a mobile operation room which provides medical aid in Africa and Europe

Nowadays there are often problems appearing when applying medical care during emergency situations, specifically in remote areas. There can be extreme circumstances in which important and vital environmental factors have to be taken into consideration, like the accessibility of the area, extreme temperatures and the ability of having a sterile...