In collaboration with Cardioline Spa, this graduation project presents the development of a discreet device to monitor atrial fibrillation among elderly people. By means of user research and contest analysis, the project is aims at delivering a new product-system device for the company, for Healthcare institutions and for private patients. The project is characterized by three main phases: the first one is about the analysis of the holter monitor world ; the second is related to synthesizing the research results into one concept; and the third one focuses on validating and test the concept proposed. According to the three pillar of Industrial design engineering the research was divided into the three macro areas of: People, Business and Technology. The people linked with the holter monitor system investigated during several activities including Interviews were 14 elderly patients, one General practitioner, one cardiologist and two nurses. Furthermore, to dive deeper into the experience I underwent a 24 hour holter monitor experience. The magnitude of the cardio healthcare business side was explored by the analysis of the main Healthcare trends. In addition, special attention was given to Cardioline’s past innovations and some guidelines for future innovations were outlined. The technology side was also investigated. The Scope of the technology analysis was to understand the current state of the art of ECG technology and its related evolution over the years.
There was a special focus on the transition from the current situation to the mobile health and to why biosensors are preferred to the standard holter monitor. To close the technological part, a perceptual map was made in order to compare the Cardioline product with its competitors. The perceptual map was also used to decide on the transition from the current product to the future product. All the data collected during the analysis phase was collected in a list of requirements composed of demands (hard requirements) and wishes (soft requirements). Afterwards a brainstorm session was run taking into account some of the main problem revealed. After several iterations, the brainstorm results were synthesized into three concepts which were presented during the midterm presentation. Feedback was provided by chair, by mentor and by the Company mentor. Suggestions were used to determined the final user scenario, the final system layout and the final concept. The final concept consisted of a wearable device which records and transmits ECG signal to the smart phone. The smart phone collects and transmits data to the cloud server where the user and Doctor, if authorized, can have access. With a special focus on the setting up phase, a test was performed. The scope of the test was to check if specific concept features were correctly driving the user towards the hypothesised behaviour. The test revealed good and improvable aspects of the product-system designed. The improvable aspects were used to refine the final concepts.
Finally, together with Cardioline supervision, several engineering ecommendations were elaborated. Those recommendations were related to the concept material, to the electronic components