A pneumatically-driven ventilator, optimized for a Covid-19 health care context and assembled in under 4 hours. VOX was designed, engineered and built from the ground up in 10 weeks by fuseproject, cionic and ME partners.
Recognition:
Interior Design Magazine Best of Year 2020 - Winner Healthcare Furniture
Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas 2021 - Honorable Mention - Pandemic Responsive Category
Driving our unique approach to the design was the investment made at project onset to familiarize ourselves with the existing user experience of respiratory therapists, ICU nurses, and doctors running ventilators. By taking the time to meet and interview healthcare professionals on how they were using ventilators, our team was able to glean deep insight and identify key opportunities for improvement. We explored mobility challenges, transportation and storage, cord management safety, alarm management and policies, and ventilator settings. Research insights, synthesized in partnership with industrial designers, engineers, interaction designers, and technologists, formed the foundation for user-first design opportunities that made the final outcome stand apart from other engineering-driven solutions.
With accidents down and elective surgeries canceled, hospitals are operating at as low as 50% capacity.
VOX leverages the ubiquitous IV pole enabling speedy manufacturability, adjustable placement in use, easy transport, and simple storage.
Ventilation, while lifesaving, introduces additional dangers of lung injury from volume or pressure trauma – especially true for long term use of bag valves (also known as ambu bag) as a ventilation device which present the potential of air valve collapse.
A pneumatic valve ventilation system offers the safest delivery of lifesaving ventilation.
Our design maximizes use of Stratasys’ advanced polyjet printing technologies and library of materials for optimized assembly.
Combining outer shell and housing, the unit leverages multi-material and multi-color printing functionality to include venting, fasteners for assembly, Venturi tubes and even exterior UI details like buttons and icons.
Tube support arm improves angle of tube-to-patient connection, reducing accidental disconnections
The cable management back cover provides a clean storage solution for he power cable while also hiding the pole clamps.
Simple rotary dial for menu navigation and incremental adjustments
Two easy to identify main buttons for of critical function oxygen boost and alarm silencing
Angled face to improve ergonomics of the device
Each hospital is unique in design, workflows, and built environment. The refinement of our design focused on flexibility and adaptation, including a customizable UI flow.
Additionally, VOX’s multi-device dashboard capability opens up the possibility of a screen-free device. Low-resource contexts can opt to remove the built-in screen and leverage external mixing, thus minimizing materials and processes and reducing the overall cost of the device.
Simple attachment mechanism for variably sized poles, additionally allowing user to adjust height for comfort
Leverages built-in mobility of IV poles for easy transport
Detaches from poles for space-saving storage
Leveraging Stratasys 3D printing technology for multi-material, multi-color in a single print to eliminate labelling, assembly and post-processing, streamlining processing and production time.
Optimized size, form and material of aluminum for durability and protection
Single bend aluminum front plate which can be fabricated cheaply at most metal fabricators
Virus persists on aluminum for 2-8 hours, compared to 48 hours on steel.
All images © Fuseproject
VOX