Face down equipment after sugery for pateints

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In house Chulalongkorn Hospital innovation Compettion 2011 : Winner

Designer : Vilawan Layanun, Nat Pinvises and Opthalmologist doctor and nurse team.

Concept : Face down equipment after sugery for pateints who have a retina detachment.This equipment can help them to face down during recovery time around 3 months or more.The design made them feel comfortable for eating, reading, watching TV,talking , sleeping and remaining to face their down at appropriate angle (depend on the doctor)

In 2009 I took advantage of a great opportunity at King ChulalongkornMemorial Hospital in Bankok, Thailand and participated in the “in-house developed equipment” program. It was a project I completed with a partner. We were the only two designers teamed up with a ophthalmologist and nursing team, engineers, mechanical team, and patients. This project was inspired by one patient who had got a surgery according to her retinal detachment. The surgery was successful but during the recovery procedure that required patient to stay in a face down position between 1-3 months. Besides, patient has an obese condition, which led her to the darkness for the rest of her life. The main reason is she could not hold her face down, as the doctor required. It is true that healthcare equipment has already sold and developed in many countries but imported price is very expensive and unaffordable for many Thai people.

This project completely took almost two year, also won the in house developed equipment of Chulalongkorn Hospital. It is still ongoing of the patent, which named in a research team. It was my honor being a part of the team that create a product that help people and worked with medical team, engineers and a lot of wisely people. This is a challenging design that I had learnt a lot from it. This project inspired me a lot and made me realized about how design can improve life in the reality. According to the poverty in Thailand, there are many patient who lose their vision because they cannot support the heath care equipment not only for those patients who have ophthalmology condition but also all of poor patients. Personally, I think there are many gaps of different factors that related to the design, which motivated me to gained more in advance study and research to give the big value of design to my country.