USER RESEARCH / INDUSTRIAL DESIGN / MECHANICAL ENGINEERING / DIGITAL DESIGN

“Life, illuminated. Advancing fluorescent technology to help improve patient care.” ~MediBeacon

MediBeacon is a medical technology company focused on advancing fluorescent tracer agents and transdermal detection technology to provide vital and actionable measurements of organ function.

MediBeacon Transdermal GFR Monitor

MediBeacon charged Speck with engineering a transdermal GFR monitor: a noninvasive monitoring technology that allows for earlier detection of renal issues enabling clinicians to provide earlier, more effective interventions. The technology needed to be low-cost and straightforward to integrate into existing ICU rooms and workflows. It became clear our team would need first to understand how intensive care nurses would place the sensor on patients, administer the reagent, and interact with critical care patients.​​​​​​​

Our team set up stakeholder workshops, mapped the workflow journey, and applied ethnographic insights to gain perspective on patient care and intensive care procedure. These activities helped us dive into the behaviors and inner workings of the ICU. Speck’s end-to-end engagement with the client and patients immensely helped our team to understand the human elements involved in the ICU experience on both sides. This included critical details of sensors, consoles, and reagents, the challenges of renal monitoring, the information requirements of ICU healthcare providers, and, equally as important, the profound needs of a patient during a time of crisis.

Due to our team’s focus on the device’s optical sensor, we were able to understand the importance of the skin adhesive and how it related to patient comfort, sensor placement, and sensor reliability. This allowed us to make a skin adhesive recommendation that would address patient comfort while also increasing the precision of the sensor’s readings. The sensor tethers to a pole cart-mounted console with a narrow footprint. A large graphic display promotes clear and direct communication of real-time information. By extracting data from various channels and “touching” multiple product elements, we helped MediBeacon develop an aesthetically pleasing, visually integrated, and straightforward device experience to support doctors and nurses working with matters of life and death while minimizing patient discomfort.