Medical

In addition to the design of medical products, the subject of accessibility is also encompassed by our “Medical” branch.

From the early developmental stages of our projects, HFC researches the requirements of physically and/or mentally impaired persons as the basis of design for any usability engineering processes. Requirements can then be incorporated into every stage of the development process, with respect to the “Design for All” approach. Ultimately, a barrier-free design of systems and buildings (or systems that reduce the natural accessibility of the environment) allows affected people to gain access to their environments more easily and independently. HFC is closely involved in the development of two such systems, which should help their respective target groups to more easily and independently manage their environments.

Additional research in this area, e.g. questions regarding the perception, orientation and mobility of visually impaired and sighted people for OIWOB (Orienting, Informing, Warning and Orientation help for the Blind) are also examined by HFC. In the successful project BioLED, attention and fatigue processes were the focus of our investigations.

Similarly, other projects of ours focus on the design improvement of medical devices, according to the guidelines set by the European Union. With this in mind, safety of use and usability are thus increasingly becoming the focus of the development of medical devices.

The human factors experts at HFC can help you to meet the accessibility requirements and Medical Product Guidelines as well as supervise your development projects, for example:

• Establishing a suitable usability engineering process,
• Needs and requirements analyses,
• Drafts and designs of operating concepts and user interfaces,
• Usability evaluation and testing,
• Risk assessment and usability validation,
• Documentation of the results in a format helpful for administrative bodies

Some of our projects in medical section:

CONTENT4ALL – Personalised Content Creation for the Deaf Community in a Connected Digital Single Market

The 2008 Convention on the Rights of the Disabled states that television content should be accessible to the deaf. However, the production of sign language programs is very expensive. Therefore, ... Weiterlesen

SOMNOgraph

Self-managed, home-based recording of the quality of sleep Motivation: Around 30% of women and men in Germany suffer from clinically relevant sleep disorders. These can be the cause of fatal ... Weiterlesen

OIWOB – Orienting, Informing, Warning and Orientation – Assistance for the Blind

Within OIWOB, five partners from industry and research, develop an assistance system that supports orientation of visually impaired and blind people in their out-door environment.

ViBe–Virtual Companion

To enhance elderly’s feeling of security, ensure sustained mobility and thus support their active participation in public and social urban life, we develop and evaluate a virtual companion within the project ViBe.

BioLED – Individualised Lightning Functional Clothing

The objective of this research project was the development of an application which uses the therapeutic effects of monochromatic, colored light.

e-SENSE – Capturing Ambient Intelligence for Mobile Communication through Wireless Sensor Networks

As part of the EU project e-Sense, between 2005 and 2007 HFC has been working on intelligent, wireless sensor networks, collaborating with 23 partners from indus-try and research.