Toilet Transfer Assistive Device Research

I’m excited to finally post some information about a project that has been in progress since last march but has reached some resolution and we’ve applied for a provisional patent. I’ve had the honor of participating with a great team of medical students on creating a device that will help with toileting transfers for people with limited lower limb mobility. The project was part of Jeffsolves– an incubator project launched and supported by the amazing team of innovators at the Health Design Lab.

For this project I was fortunate to be working with an amazing team of medical students to evaluate the issues and address the problem space – bathroom transfers while toileting. We worked together to brainstorm solutions after speaking with multiple experts – people with moderate upper body strength who are able to self transfer in bathroom situations. We also spoke to several OTs, PTs and other medical professionals for insight into this problem space. I found the interviews to be an amazing experience and I thoroughly enjoyed uncovering insights into underserved needs.

We expanded on our research with sketching, concept prototyping and eventual 3d printed solutions to test our hypotheses. We purchased a toilet that we could use solely for the testing of our many devices and installed it in the lab. Through much iteration and repeated check-ins with medical and design professionals each week, we were able to create a simple solution that addresses some of the primary concerns of our users: stability and safety during transfer.

My role in this project was to sketch prototype ideas and work in Solidworks to build printable models for each iteration. I also printed the prototypes we brainstormed together on my SLA printer for form evaluation before we finally got a weight-bearing model from the Health Design Lab in the FormLab Tough resin. 

We filed a provisional patent application and publicly presented our project as part of Design Philadelphia. It has been a great experience interviewing potential users through Savvy Co-op, gathering input from OTs and PTs in the Jefferson medical school and working with the fantastic support of product design experts at Bressler Group.