A participatory approach to redesign a tube connecting system for home parental nutrition

Abstract

Patients receiving parenteral nutrition at home suffer from a lower quality of life as they receive continuous therapy for up to 16 hours a day. It is not possible to interrupt nutriton therapy for everyday activities, as any interruption poses a health risk to the patient. Therefore, a ambulatory care services comes twice a day to connect and disconnect. The aim of this project is to develop a system that makes it manageable for patients to interrupt their feeding therapy in a self-determined way. In order to achieve this, enginners and social scientists collaborated to conduct an ergonomics study using the Design of Experiments(DoE) method to compare three commonly used connection systems. Analysis of variance(ANOVA) was used to secure the tests. In parallel, the probands were asked about their subiective feelings during the closure process. The results provided indications for the redesign of a home parenteral nutrition system. As safety is a crucial issue, the opening and closing process of the system was virtually simulated with the min. and max. finger force of the test persons in order to ensure a safe connection and disconnection with the system at all times. Overall, this participatory approach enable the design of the closure system to take account patients'fears wishes.