Specialisation Medisign
Healthcare is one of the fastest growing industries across the world. In the West the accent is more on cure and care, in contrast to developing countries, where the accent is on prevention. But whether the emphasis is on cure or prevention, health care professionals rely on increasingly complex equipment in their work. The design of that equipment requires highly trained specialists with expertise in engineering, industrial design and medical sciences. The aim of the specialisation in Medisign is to train these specialists.
Specialisation
Language
English
Credits
15 EC within a regular IDE Master programme
Designing for medical applications demands inventiveness as well as the ability to integrate thinking across functional interfaces and to translate complex capabilities into designs that serve the health care practitioner and the patient. Advances in the field result when designers combine creativity, engineering excellence, and vision. The Medisign specialisation trains dedicated and skilled engineers in human anatomy, physiology, medical technology, healthcare systems and some basic surgical techniques. It also offers a pathway for health specialists to move into the Medisign field.Participants in the programme are challenged to develop products that meet the needs of surgeons, doctors, therapists and patients and to solve problems in human-product interaction.
To specialise in Medisign you are required to complete at least one master specific project worth 9 EC and a thesis project focusing on Medisign. Additionally, you need to follow 3 electives (in total 9 EC) with a healthcare focus 2 from the Medisign electives list. Other projects and modules with a healthcare focus are optional and projects more than 3 EC will be count as one elective. Students can enrol for this specialisation by sending an email to Armaĝan Albayrak.
For the Medisign specialization, students must be enrolled in the Master programmes Integrated Product Design (IPD), Strategic Product Design (SPD) or Design for Interaction (DfI).
To specialise in Medisign you are required to:
- Spend at least 9 ECTS for electives (out of 18) in Medisign electives,
- Have at least one project, worth 9 ECTS, with an explicit focus on Medisign,
- Graduate in a project with an explicit focus on Medisign,
- Recommended; further electives, dependent on master program.
Detailed course objectives for Medisign students include:
- Knowledge of the structure and processes of the human body,
- Insight into healthcare and its many products,
- Ability to do research in the medical field specifically on product development.
This special education program was initiated in cooperation with the Medical faculty at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam (15 km from Delft). The program consists of four semesters, each offering 30 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System); students can begin specializing in this program twice a year: Autumn and Spring.
A short description of the Medisign Electives can be found here. For more information, please refer to the Study Guide.
Compulsory: minimum of three courses from the following electives, at least two IDE electives. Other combinations of electives are in consult with the Medisign coordinator.
Medisign electives
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Here, the skeleton is studied as a mechanical system, the form and function of points discussed, and the mechanical properties and functions of biological materials such as bone and skin are analysed.
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Cognitive ergonomics is traditionally concerned with mental processes, such as perception, memory, reasoning, and motor response, as they affect interactions among humans and other elements of a system. Relevant topics include mental workload (work stress), decision-making, performance, human-computer interaction, and skill acquisition.
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You will apply the theory obtained in ID5333 by conducting a series of small experiments. The experiment will be based on a real life situation of an encounter with a complex system and an abstraction made of this situation. This abstraction should mimic an aspect of a real life situation. The results of this experiment have to be visualized and translated back into the real life context with implications for design. You will work in a group of 2-3 students..
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These are weekly meetings at which design challenges and research topics in the medical field are presented and discussed.
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When doing design research designers often come across psychological topics. Especially in healthcare related projects, designers can touch upon psychological topics such as motivation during rehabilitation, coping with stressful situations (decision for surgery), and medication adherence. Yet validated psychological methods (including questionnaires, patient-reported outcome measures, and experience measures) and models are not commonly embedded in the design process. Using validated questionnaires will help designers to execute high quality research and improve the reliability of their outcomes. Furthermore, knowledge of psychological models will help designers understand which psychological factors influence behavior and will inspire and guide them in their design process.
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This master elective course focuses on the developments within the eHealth sector and enables students to gain more knowledge about this upcoming healthcare design field. Lectures will be provided by the members of the eHealth consortium within the IDE faculty and in collaboration with the Medical Delta (Leiden University Medical Centre and Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam). Topics include the range of eHealth research at our faculty (e.g. from patient apps to decision support systems to (physical) objects with intent to persuasive game design to designing digital applications for the elderly).
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This master elective course provides insights into the medical design directives regarding safety of healthcare products by focusing on the CE marking process (including ISO norms and risk management). The course includes several lectures of TU Delft researchers and external professionals working in the healthcare field. Next to the lectures, students will do several duo-assignments in which they apply insights into practice with the use of a case-study. The course builds upon the ‘eHealth’ elective course that argues the large number of healthcare products that tend to be ‘healthcare products’ for consumers but are not certified as safe healthcare products. The course shows students the importance of risk analysis of healthcare products and helps them to integrate this in their design process.
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* When doing a project with a medical focus
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The main course goal is to understand the current state of the phenomenon of Inclusive Design, which had alternative names like Design for All or Universal Design. Inclusive Design means to aim for the widest possible audience during and with the design process. It does not mean however to design for all 7 billion people on earth! It means considering any specified population to include in designing. For example: left-handed people, wheelchair users, tall people, small people, obese people, colour blind people, people with dyslexia or RSI, people with age-related specifics etc. The list continues, which means that we realise that hardly anyone is ‘normal’. People aged over 65 for example, currently count 15% in the Netherlands but this will grow to 25% in 2050. They are more diverse than younger people. Risks for them also rise: lethal home accidents rise 5-fold compared to younger people.
The effect of design should be that stigmatisation and risk is avoided, and participation and quality of life is enhanced. Take the example of eye glasses: they were an orthesis in the middle ages and are now aesthetic lifestyle enhancements.
To design inclusively, the designer needs to be able to collaborate with people, understand understand their usage of their everyday things, and respond creatively.
Please note: in spring 2017 this course is given in combination with course id5613. This means, they are merged this time. When you follow one you automatically follow the other. You can choose for which course you want the credits. -
The course will consist of four lectures where the following topics will be discussed:
- Introduction to the basic principles of human thermoregulation where heat exchange mechanisms between human body and the surrounding environment, thermal perception, body temperature also with relation to age and gender, thermophysiological responses and thermal comfort will be addressed.
- Introduction to environments and health conditions where human thermoregulation is challenged. Followed by various examples of designing products that support human thermoregulation under such challenging conditions. For example clothing and personal cooling systems used to increase exercise performance in athletes, to relieve neurological symptoms in patients with multiple sclerosis or to relieve heat strain in professionals such as fire-fighters will be discussed.
- Introduction to the basics of various mathematical models of human thermoregulation and thermal comfort such as Gagge, Stolwijk and Fiala model.
- Exploring the use of the mathematical models of human thermoregulation to improve the well-being and performance for office occupants and application of personal cooling systems.
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Participation in ‘Contextmapping Skills’ is open to all MSc students who believe that end-users are important sources of information for leading new product development.
Contextmapping is a design (research) method for including users and other stakeholders in a design process as ‘expert of their experience’. By applying generative techniques in the research process, underlying needs, motivations and dreams can be discovered. Over the past decade, the method and its underlying principles and theories have been developed at TU Delft in close collaboration with Dutch and international researchers and practitioners. This development has been done in about a dozen PhD projects, hundreds of MSc projects, and two (online) masterclasses, most of these in close collaboration with industry (see http://studiolab.ide.tudelft.nl/studiolab/contextmapping/resources/).
* For these electives, the assignment should have a medical focus.
Recommended courses from other faculties
BM1107 Anatomy and Physiology (4 ects)
BM1109 Medical Technology I (Diagnostic Devices) & Health Care Systems (5 ects)
BM1220-13 Medical Instruments B: Quality Assurance in Design (3 ects)
BM1240 Human Movement Control A: Musculoskeletal Mechanics (3 ects)
WB2308 Biomedical Engineering Design - 4 ects
The course introduces the field of prostheses and orthoses.
ME41096 Bio-Inspired Design - 5 ects
The course looks at ‘non-conventional mechanical approaches in nature’ and examples of bio-inspired instruments and machines.
Staff
Richard Goossens
- +31 (0)15 27 86340
- R.H.M.Goossens@tudelft.nl
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Room C-3-140
"In the end there is a solution for everything."
Huib de Ridder
- +31 (0)15 27 81815
- H.deRidder@tudelft.nl
- Publications
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Room 32-C-2-290
Armagan Albayrak
- +31 (0)15 27 81932
- A.Albayrak@tudelft.nl
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Room C-3-080
Stella Boess
- +31 (0)15 27 83196
- S.U.Boess@tudelft.nl
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Room B-2-140 StudioMingle
Tischa van der Cammen
- +31 (0)15 27 83021
- t.j.m.vandercammen@tudelft.nl
- Publications
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Room C-3-180
"Autonomous ageing"
Marijke Melles
- +31 (0)15 27 87514
- M.Melles@tudelft.nl
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Room C-3-080
"A well thought-out medical product reflects the daily experiences of the medical practitioner."
Johan Molenbroek
- +31 (0)15 27 83086
- J.F.M.Molenbroek@tudelft.nl
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Room C-2-170
Sonja Paus-Buzink
- s.n.paus-buzink@tudelft.nl
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Room C3-170
Marieke Sonneveld
- +31 6 24638474
- +31 (0)15 27 83088
- M.H.Sonneveld@tudelft.nl
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Room C-3-220
Frido Smulders
"There is nothing so practical as a good theory."
PhD Students
Lyè Goto
- L.Goto@tudelft.nl
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Room B-2-280 StudioDream
"Ame ni mo makezu. Kaze ni mo makezu …" - Miyazawa Kenji
Do you, as a company or organisation, have a student-, internship- or graduation assignment which fits the healthcare domain, and which involves product development or product innovation (management)? If so, please have a look at the following links: group projects, individual graduation projects or internships. The assignments can either be practical, theoretical, or a combination of both.
