New Conceptual Approaches in the Orthopaedic Knee Brace Supply
DS 85-1: Proceedings of NordDesign 2016, Volume 1, Trondheim, Norway, 10th - 12th August 2016
Year: 2016
Editor: Boks, Casper; Sigurjonsson, Johannes; Steinert, Martin; Vis, Carlijn; Wulvik, Andreas
Author: Kuchinke, Lisa-Marie; Sauerhoff, Maike; Neumann, Marc; Bender, Beate
Series: NordDESIGN
Institution: Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
Section: Healthcare and Welfare Design
Page(s): 227-237
ISBN: 978-1-904670-80-3
Abstract
In recent years an increasing interest in customizing medical and orthopaedic products in connection with an individual treatment of each patient can be noticed. This trend also includes the sector of knee orthosis. Furthermore it comes along with the desire of applying modern measurement techniques in the existing supply processes or creating new modern ways of patient treatment.
Nowadays the orthopaedist measures the width of the patient´s thigh, knee and shank by hand and can choose a knee brace of a selection consisting of three up to five different brace sizes. Afterwards the orthopaedist has to adapt the brace to the patient´s leg by bending it into the right form. So, the complete process is strictly addicted to the orthopaedist’s experience, power and accuracy. That implies that the result is not measurable or reproducible. This research work presents an approach for a new modular knee brace system which offers the possibility of adapting the orthosis to the needs of different cases of injury and the phases during the therapy. Due to the importance of the well-fitting of the orthosis a measurement technique is developed to improve a high fitting accuracy independent from the orthopaedist’s experience. So, that the results are measurable and reproducible.
Keywords: supply process, patient individual treatment, health care