NHS | HEALTHCARE FURNITURE DESIGN

Improving patient outcomes through great design

Design For Manufacture
User Centred Design
   Thermal Modelling

Sector: Industrial Design

The Design Challenge

Ocura asked Realise to develop a piece of healthcare furniture that could improve patient outcomes, by making patient’s experience better, medical staff’s jobs easier and being easier to keep ‘bug free’ to reduce hospital acquired infections (HCAI).

Our Design Solutions

Using extensive interviewing, observation and desk based research, we developed a package of Stakeholder Maps and Personas, Kano Analyses and Importance-Difficulty Matrixes to clearly visualise and understand user’s needs and inform our design going forwards.

Based on the prioritised we brainstormed hundreds of possible solutions, combining these into a range of concepts.

Each concept was then developed further until we were satisfied it was feasible and offered some unique value – for example, ways to improve patient’s storage, security of possessions or drugs, rationalisation, ways to help staff do their tasks and ease of cleaning.

Finally we scored and ranked the remaining developed concepts against the product requirements, and selected the winning route.

The Delivery

The chosen concept was detailed up in 3D CAD and renders were created to review the design with Ocura and manufacturers. The final design solution was wholly rotomolded bedside cabinet (A world first!) enabling the base model to be produced and sold with only 5 component parts; dramatically reducing cost & complexity and increasing reliability and durability.

The system can then also be upgraded through modular accessories to provide additional features such as RFID locks, VDU stands, shelves, trays and rails.