Designing a Smart Speculum for Low Resource Settings: The Impact of Contextual Factors on the Design of a Point of Care Cervical Cancer Screening Device

Cervical Cancer (CC) is a preventable disease and is easily treated when detected early. Yet it is the second most prevalent cancer related death in Cameroon, causing an estimated 1787 deaths each year (Woks et al, 2023). Cameroon has implemented no national strategy to prevent this disease and so screening practices that are in place are...

Design of a Novel Mechanism for Use in a Cancellous Bone Biopsy Instrument

Background: Minimally invasive cancellous bone biopsy is a common medical procedure in which a needle is used to extract a piece of cancellous bone for examination. Unfortunately, this procedure is not always successful, as sometimes the biopsy can slip partially or completely, necessitating a new biopsy. The occurrence of these errors is not...

Developing a hands-free video microscope concept for monitoring skin microcirculation in ICU patients

This thesis describes the development of a bedside system concept for monitoring the microcirculation of intensive care patients.<br/><br/>Microcirculation refers to the smallest blood vessels in the body, including capillaries, arterioles, and venules. These tiny blood vessels facilitate the exchange of oxygen, nutrients, and waste products...

Designing a sustainable transition in the MedTech industry: An analysis of the current challenges for the implementation of the circular economy on surgical devices like the single-use endocutter

This graduation project explored how the circular economy could be implemented for single-use surgical devices like the endocutter. Design for reprocessing appears to be the best strategy, but modular solutions should be considered when reprocessing the entire device is not feasible. The project followed a transition management approach; a...

Reusable Bipolar Vessel Sealing Device with a Uniform Pressure Profile: Design, Development and Validation

Bipolar electrosurgical vessel sealing is commonly used in human and veterinary medicine. This method of vessel sealing is often preferred over traditional suturing or clipping of blood vessels because it comes with the advantages of reducing intraoperative blood loss and operation time. Most bipolar vessel sealers are disposable. The high costs...

Reprocessing of Syringe Extension Device for Manual Vacuum Aspiration (MVA) procedures in Low Resource Settings in Sub-Saharan Africa: Effects on material and manufacturing choices

Understanding how medical-grade Chemical Sterilization and High-Level Disinfection (HLD), and usage of the device in context affect the integrity of the device within its expected lifetime, and to suggest material choice, manufacturing method and recommend design changes for a syringe extension device, to be used for Manual Vacuum Aspiration...

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...

Alternating Follow-the-Leader Medical Device with Pneumatically Actuated Shape Locks

Developments in minimally invasive surgery such as natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery and single port laparoscopic surgery have pushed medical devices to be higher articulated and more dexterous. These surgery methods have proven to greatly decrease bleeding, scar tissue, hospital time, and cost. The procedures involve the...

Intratumoral holmium microsphere injection in pancreatic cancer

Introduction: Pancreatic adenocarcinoma holds one of the worst prognosis of all known malignancies. Local treatment options for patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer may increase tumor control and benefit patient survival. This study aimed to test the feasibility of a possible new treatment method utilizing intratumoral holmium...

Development of a novel steerable embolization microcatheter: for endovascular tumor treatment

Microcatheters are used for endovascular diagnosis and treatment purposes. Variations of this minimally invasive instrument, accompanied by guidewires, are manipulated through the vasculature towards the target of the intervention. The human vascular anatomy can however present complex pathways towards a target, for example a distal tumor....

Design of a Surgical Tag Applicator

Surgical removal remains the preferred treatment for tumors. In order to ensure complete removal, a margin of surrounding healthy tissue is removed together with it. Research has found a relationship between the width of this resection margin and tumor recurrence; patient outcome is improved with greater margins. In order to ensure that no tumor...

Olla-Deluxe, development of a patient-specific commode

The new concept introduces a patient-specific commode, achieved by connecting the commode to the hospital bed. This will diminish the chances of cross-contamination between patients. The one-person-use will save the nurses up to 30 minutes of cleaning time per use. The features integrated into the concept will be supporting the nurses during...

Emma - Improving the patient's therapy adherence by using a smart wristband device

This thesis describes the design process and end results of my graduation internship at Medicine Men, a startup which develops medical applications for wearable devices. My design goal was to design the ?mma watchapp interface in such a way that it improves the therapy adherence of chronic patients. This project will focus on the unintentional...

Development of a medical device for diagnosis and treatment of pelvic floor dysfunctions

This graduation thesis describes the development of a system for the diagnosis and treatment of Pelvic Floor Dysfunctions, such as urinary incontinence, bowel problems, pain, pelvic prolapse and/or sexual dysfunction. The assignment was initiated by MAXAM Medical, a start-up company consisting of Fiebke Op de Macks (author of this thesis) and ir...

Increasing the safety of use of medical devices by improving procurements

The summary can be found in the report.