UNS: Walking and Talking: Improved Quality of Life Through Enhanced Mobility and Communication

这项工作将协同工程、医师助理研究和商业的学生共同开发辅助技术设备，以改善残疾人士的行动能力和沟通能力。10个学生团队将直接与患者（最终用户），教师和区域临床合作者一起工作，以确定产品需求，评估初步设计，并评估最终设计的辅助设备。这种合作将促进设计解决方案，务实地解决日常生活中独立行动和沟通的真正限制。商学院学生参与提供的营销专业知识，以及与克拉克森的希普利创新中心和Reh创业中心的计划互动，将确保商业化潜力在整个设计工作中始终是一个重点。每个项目将产生一个定制的原型，预计一些项目将产生可销售的产品，以使特定的用户群体受益。此外，每个项目将在工程、医师助理和商业学生中培养以用户为中心的设计精神。学生将有独特的机会直接与临床医生和最终用户一起工作，了解与行动和/或沟通限制相关的挑战，并将他们的集体专业知识集中在临床相关和实用的辅助设备上，以满足这些需求。这一重点将为参与的学生提供独特的教育体验，强调如何应用工程原理造福人类，从而提高对工程和社会参与机会的认识。学生还将为每个设备制定从床到床的商业化计划，并在地区和国家出版物和会议上分享他们设计的产品。该提案的总体目标是实现本科设计经验，促进工程，商业和健康科学学生之间的跨学科互动。设计经验将在一个学年中进行，并可选择在夏季继续工作计划。每个设计经验将包括以下组成部分：1)问题识别，2)市场分析，3)设计概念化和分析，4)经济发展计划，5)设备设计和测试，6)从工作台到市场过渡计划，7)最终原型设计，8)结果的传播和推广活动。这项工作的智力价值在于将设计的辅助设备，以及本科设计经验本身的框架，它将工程，商业和健康科学的学生与临床提供者，最终用户和商业专业人士聚集在一起，开发定制的辅助设备和将设备推向市场的商业化计划。设计经验也将为本科生追求研究生教育和研究机会做好准备，这是克拉克森大学通过之前参与生物医学设计项目的学生建立的传统。这项工作的主要广泛影响有三个方面：1)为以用户为中心的辅助设备的设计、评估和营销建立一个多学科合作框架；2)工程专业学生（和教师）与农村医疗保健提供者的合作，他们的患者群体将从辅助设备中受益；3)建立必要的设计基础设施，使克拉克森大学继续与临床专业人员和患者群体互动，以支持辅助设备的需求。最终，多学科学生团队、临床提供者和患者社区的互动参与将增强所有相关人员的广泛教育，同时解决独立生活的局限性，这些局限性会对整体生活质量产生不利影响。除了对学生的好处之外，参与设计过程的最终用户将深入了解技术背景下的限制和需求，并对工程师在提高生活质量方面发挥的作用表示赞赏。

This work will synergistically bring together students of engineering, physician assistant studies, and business to work to develop assistive technology devices to improve the mobility and communication of impaired individuals. Ten student teams will work directly with patients (end users), faculty, and regional clinical collaborators to define a product need, evaluate preliminary designs, and assess the assistive device that is ultimately designed. This collaboration will facilitate design solutions that pragmatically address real limitations to independent mobility and communication in daily living. The marketing expertise provided by business student involvement and planned interactions with Clarkson's Shipley Center for Innovation and Reh Center for Entrepreneurship will ensure that commercialization potential remains a focus throughout the design effort. Each project will produce a custom prototype and it is expected that some projects will lead to marketable products to benefit specific user cohorts. Furthermore, each project will develop an ethos of user-centered design in the engineering, physician assistant, and business students.Students will have the unique opportunity to work directly with clinicians and end-users to understand challenges related to limitations in mobility and/or communication and to focus their collective expertise on clinically relevant and practical assistive devices that address these needs. This emphasis will facilitate a unique educational experience for participating students that highlights how engineering principles can be applied to benefit humanity, thereby increasing awareness of opportunities for engineering and societal engagement. Students will also develop bench-to-bedside commercialization plans for each device and share their designed products in regional and national publications and conferences.The overarching goal of this proposal is to implement an undergraduate design experience that fosters interdisciplinary interactions between engineering, business, and health sciences students. The design experience will be carried out over an academic school year with the option to continue the work plan over the summer. Each design experience will include the following components: 1) problem identification, 2) market analysis, 3) design conceptualization and analysis, 4) economic development plan, 5) device design and testing, 6) bench top to market transition plan, 7) final prototype design, and 8) dissemination of results and outreach activities.The intellectual merit of this work lies both in the assistive devices that will be designed, as well as the framework of the undergraduate design experience itself, which brings engineering, business, and health sciences students together with clinical providers, end users, and business professionals to develop customized assistive devices and commercialization plans for bringing the devices to market. The design experience will also prepare undergraduates to pursue graduate education and research opportunities, a tradition that has been established through prior students involved in biomedical design projects at Clarkson.The main broader impacts of this work are threefold: 1) the establishment of a multi-disciplinary collaborative framework for the design, evaluation, and marketing of user-centric assistive devices, 2) the engagement of engineering students (and faculty) with rural healthcare providers whose patient populations will benefit from the assistive devices, and 3) the establishment of the necessary design infrastructure for continued Clarkson University interaction with the clinical professionals and patient populations in support of assistive-device needs. Ultimately, interactive engagement of multi-disciplinary student teams, clinical providers, and patient communities will enhance the broad education of all involved while concomitantly addressing limitations to independent living that adversely impact overall quality of life. In addition to the benefits to students, the end users involved in the design process will gain insight into articulating limitations and needs in a technical context and an appreciation for the role that engineers play in quality of life enhancements.