The project began by identifying a problem: patients undergoing incentive respiratory therapy show low adherence (staying disciplined in performing the exercises) to lung re-expansion therapy. A new product for incentive respiratory therapy, UBICU, was designed and validated; it accompanies the patient in an engaging way while performing the exercises and lets the therapist increase service coverage, since they can prescribe and track patients’ performance remotely. The design used an interdisciplinary approach that synergistically combined the design theories Design Thinking, TRIZ, and Axiomatic Design. To validate the product, a comparative clinical study was conducted with the commercial mechanical device TRIFLO in healthy adults to evaluate lung re-expansion. UBICU showed better performance in intrapulmonary volume gain than the mechanical system.
ubicu