Design and Development of a User-Friendly Motorized Apparatus for the Filling of Portable Infusion Pumps by Hospital and Homecare Health Workers

Abstract

: Musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) remain the most common occupational disease in the Western countries. Beside the effects on workers themselves, MSDs may lead to high costs to enterprises and the society as a whole. Among the painful or tiring positions encountered in healthcare settings, caregivers often cite the filling of portable infusion pumps (PIP). This context was conducive to achievement of the goal of the following project: the development of a motorized apparatus designed to minimize the risk of MSDs caused by repeated gestures of filling PIPs.: The development of the tool followed eleven steps including: (a) a market analysis, (b) a SWOT analysis, (c) definition of the specifications of the apparatus, and (d) a concurrent engineering methodology.: In approximately 18 months, a dynamic project group supported by a concurrent engineering methodology has designed and developed a compact and lightweight motorized apparatus able to suppress the risk of MSDs caused by manual filling of PIPs. After a mandatory step of familiarization, all involved operators have unanimously endorsed the new tool.: We believe that this new motorized apparatus may now simply and substantially alleviate occupational MSDs caused by the manually filling of PIPs. Another major benefit of this research program is the clear improvement of the intrinsically quality of therapeutic objects (TO) through the creation of a more accurate and reproducible method of PIP filling.