Ergonomics and Design: Neonatal Transport Incubator for Premature or Pathological Newborn Transportation

Abstract

For the past few years, cultural and technological progress has allowed premature newborns greater possibilities for survival. Since not all the infants are born in hospitals that can provide appropriate treatments, 2–2,5% of newborns need to be transferred. The aim of this design research is to give comfort to the newborn, as well as to give healthcare professionals better working conditions in order to facilitate their interactions and reduce errors during all the transportation phases. This research used methodologies of “Human-Centred Design”, focusing on direct and indirect users’ needs, skills and different points of view of professionals involved in the design or planning of the products/services. By conducting field surveys at the Meyer Children’s Hospital, useful data has been collected to address some of the problems related to neonatal transportation by combining users’ needs with technology. The collected information allowed an analysis of users’ behavior, their needs and the frequency of errors during the performance of tasks, evaluating critical issues of actual products/systems and defining new requirements. The research has focused on understanding the current user incubator interface and on evaluating its emotional impact on users. Indeed, incubators can be very unwieldy and hard to manage during transportation. This approach has led to developing new solutions to better meet the needs of healthcare professionals. By synthesizing the obtained results, it has been possible to set up new solutions which lead to the design of a new incubator for premature or pathological newborn transportation.