/ AMY
Swallowing assistive wearable for dysphagia for post-stroke patients
FUNDED BY
The Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, under the iFellowship of the School of International Biodesign.
Mentor: Dr. Prashant Jha
TEAM
4 member Inter-disciplinary team
Bree Davide (Registered Nurse)
Brodie Lingard (Biomedical Researcher)
Suteerth Tripathi (Mechantronics engineer)
Manisha Laroia (Product Designer)
DURATION
1 year | 2016
/ ABOUT
Amy is a wearable device for monitoring swallowing and therapy activities in dysphagia affected patients (stroke patients).
Dysphagia is a silent problem in which most patients live in constant fear of aspiration with no assistance outside of clinical settings. Amy works in sync with a mobile application and is developed to provide assistance to patients for safe eating at home.
/ THE PROCESS
The Biodesign process is divided into 4 phases: DISCOVER, DEFINE, DESIGN and DELIVER.As part of the fellowship, we spent the initial Discovery phase in clinical immersion; looking out for problems and opportunites that would have high impact when solved. Parallely, secondary research was carried out through academic papers and documents defining the functioning and requirements of the health system. It was followed by a stringent needs filtering process to go from 300+ needs to the top 2 needs.
Particularly for Dysphagia, it was a PATIENT-CENTRIC problem which needed us to understand the patient journey. We worked closely with therapist to understand the therapy and recovery process. We carried out a detailed mapping of the patients journey and designed the product to overcome their pain points. We then followed the conventional design process of market study, interviewing stakeholders in India and Australia, building concepts, product development through user testing.
/ RESEARCH & DATA COLLECTION
/ USER JOURNEY MAPPING
/ SYSTEM MAPPING & NEED IDENTIFICATION
/ PROTOTYPING
/ PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE
/ AMY FEATURES & SYNCING WITH APP
