The design of non-invasive pediatric vision screener that detects refractive errors, Strabismus and Amblyopia in children from urban and rural India

The design of non-invasive pediatric vision screener that detects refractive errors, Strabismus and Amblyopia in children from urban and rural India

Hoogewerf, H.

Van de Bovenkamp, P.A. (mentor)
Goto, L. (mentor)
Goossens, R.H.M. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Master of Science Integrated Product Design

2014-02-14

This report presents the graduation project of Hanneke Hoogewerf, master student Integrated Product Design at the Delft University of Technology. This project is titled ““The design of non-invasive pediatric vision screener that detects refractive errors, Strabismus and Amblyopia in children from urban and rural India.” In India, approximately 36 million children suffer from low vision, mainly caused by refractive errors, Amblyopia and Strabismus. Especially Amblyopia is important to detect in young children as this ailment causes irreversible damage to the child’s sight when it is not treated before the child’s 8th year. This can lead to one-eye-blindness, increasing the child’s chances on full blindness during its future life. Thereby, low vision can lead to a loss of productivity in school, deteriorating the child’s future perspective. Unfortunately India lacks tremendously when it comes to healthcare delivery to especially the poorer groups in society, leaving many cases of low vision in children undetected and untreated. Forus Health Pvt. Ltd. Is a start-up company in Bangalore, India, with the mission “to address the healthcare delivery crisis in the developing world through innovative and inclusive product design and service deployment.” By introducing a non-invasive pediatric vision screener, Forus Health wants to enable people without medical backgrounds to perform pediatric eye-screenings and trough this principle screen as many children as possible. As this project implies a design of a screener that will be used by people who are unfamiliar with the concept of vision screening, it is important that the design meets the operator’s needs and capacity when it comes to product-operation. Therefore IDEO’s Toolkit for Human-Centered-Design is used to obtain information on the target group via the Human-Centered-Design approach. A final concept design for the pediatric vision screener will be presented that is established based on the information gained on the target group and the environmental factors of rural- and urban-India. This design encounters; - An interface specially designed for use by people with poor experience in operating electrical devices. The interface guides the inexperience user step by step through the process. - An ergonomic housing design of the pediatric vision screener, housing the working principle designed at Forus Health whilst facilitating a firm and stable grip for the Indian user. - An implemented trigger for attracting the sight from children who are not familiar to medical examinations and find large devices intimidating. The product was evaluated in an earlier phase in India through user tests with possible operators and children. The final interface design was tested with elderly Dutch people because of their comparable IT-literacy to the Indian target group. The housing design was tested on Indian students of the Delft University of Technology, to meet the anatomical properties of the target group. Findings of this user test are translated into recommendations for further development. Moreover recommendations are given on the future manufacturing and on the business & marketing development. Of all applied methods, IDEO’s toolkit for Human-Centered-Design was the most helpful for communicating complex and unfamiliar principles to the target group by the use of metaphors. Also the tips given on research in rural areas with respect to the approach of the target group were of great help whilst performing user-research in rural India.

India
Refractive Errors
Amblyopia
Strabismus
Human Centered Design

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:fec0a53e-8d78-4795-9cdf-a96f214baa9b

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2014 Hoogewerf, H.