Healing by transforming: Creating the empowered healing environment

According to the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM), there will be more focus on tackling the unhealthy effects of urbanization in the near future. This together with the presence of a large stock of vacant buildings and other developments within these urban areas and the challenges which are formed by the developments in...

Force Sensing in Robotic Surgery: A force sensing strategy for 3 mm shaft actuated tip articulated instruments in RAMIS

Over the past decades Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) has become a standard in abdominal surgery. Due to limited dexterity and bad ergonomics the field of MIS is shifting towards Robot-Assisted MIS (RAMIS). Simultaneously, the field is using increasingly small and steerable instruments to reduce invasiveness. Surgeon now work with fragile...

A Roadmap towards Touchless Interaction during Image-guided Therapy: Enhancing workflow in complex medical procedures through strategic technology implementation

Philips is the global leader in Image-Guided Therapy (IGT). This medical specialization provides integrated solutions that allow for minimally invasive medical procedures. A specialized medical team consisting of multiple stakeholders works closely with Philips's newest technological devices and systems during these interventions. These complex...

UV-C Sterilizer for the Wireless Powerlizer

The effectiveness of ultraviolet (UV) irradiation for disinfection has been well-known for more than a century. Recent advances in light­-emitting diode (LED) technology have brought UV LEDs to the consumer market. These offer many advantages over traditional gas­-discharge lamps, allowing UV radiation to be generated with higher reliability in...

Effect of sterilization on 3D printed patient-specific surgical guides

Background The current workflow for the design and production of patient-specific surgical guides at the Elisabeth-TweeSteden hospital is out-sourced to external companies, making it a time-consuming and costly task. In order to minimize the production time and expenses, the design and fabrication of these guides could be implemented into the...

Bacterial growth in cold water dispensers

Assessment of laparoscopic instrument reprocessing in rural India: a mixed methods study

Background: Laparoscopy is a minimally-invasive surgical procedure that uses long slender instruments that require much smaller incisions than conventional surgery. This leads to faster recovery times, fewer post-surgical wound infections and shorter hospital stays. For these reasons, laparoscopy could be particularly advantageous to patients...

Smart Personal Protective Equipment: Sensing and Control: The future of face masks

The current COVID-19 pandemic shows the necessity of personal protective equipment and face masks. In the project, a filter module with an in-situ ultraviolet-sterilization technique is designed that can serve as a new kind of smart personal protective equipment (SPPE). This technique is not used in wearable devices as of yet. The project thus...

Steam sterilization of used disposable face masks with respect to COVID-19 shortages

Sterilization of disposable face masks by means of standardized dry and steam sterilization processes: an alternative in the fight against mask shortages due to COVID-19

Anticipating Xenogenic Pollution at the Source: Impact of Sterilizations on DNA Release From Microbial Cultures

The dissemination of DNA and xenogenic elements across waterways is under scientific and public spotlight due to new gene-editing tools, such as do-it-yourself (DIY) CRISPR-Cas kits deployable at kitchen table. Over decades, prevention of spread of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), antimicrobial resistances (AMR), and pathogens from...

Clamping mechanism of memory shape material for delayed female sterilization

Female sterilisation is difficult to access in many low- and middle-income countries. Opt Medical wants to solve this problem by developing a clip that can be placed around the Fallopian tubes during C-sections without immediately affecting the fertility. By activating the clip at a suitable time, a clamping mechanism occludes the Fallopian tube...

Solution methods for the tray optimization problem

In order to perform medical surgeries, hospitals keep large inventories of surgical instruments. These instruments need to be sterilized before each surgery. Typically the instruments are kept in trays. Multiple trays may be required for a single surgery, while a single tray may contain instruments that are required for multiple surgical...

Implementation of Cold Atmospheric Plasma for Disinfecting Purposes in Health care Settings

With the rise of multidrug resistant pathogens and Hospital Acquired infections other ways of disinfection should be considered. The growing infections rate causes economic burden due to hospitalization of infected patients where as hospitalization can lead to more infections due to cross-contamination. Current techniques in Infection Prevention...

A novel approach for application of white rot fungi in wastewater treatment under non-sterile conditions: immobilization of fungi on sorghum

In this study, we tested a new approach to facilitate the application of white rot fungi (WRF) under non-sterile conditions, by introducing grain sorghum as carrier and sole carbon and nutrient source for WRF. To this end, Trametes versicolor was immobilized on sorghum, and its ability to remove humic acid (HA) from synthetic and real...

Water efficient sterilization for humanitarian aid: A redesign of the Robustex 90L (autoclave)

This master thesis describes a graduation project that is elaborated for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) innovation project Sweden. MSF is an independent, international, medical humanitarian organization. The organization is specialized in providing humanitarian aid in (developing) countries. The goal of this project is to find a solution for the...

Design of a Steerable Laparoscopic Instrument for Cleaning and Sterilization

In the last thirty years, many new surgical methods and techniques such as laparoscopic surgery and natural orifice surgery have been introduced into hospitals worldwide. As these technologies have progressed, surgical instruments have become increasingly more complex and also much more difficult to clean and sterilize. In this paper, one such...