STEM
LIFT (Leveraging Inclusive Functional Transfers) is a biomedical engineering project team under the umbrella organization M-HEAL, started up during the Fall 2017 semester. The team’s primary focus is on developing a wearable device for older adults to help minimize damage / injury during a fall incident. In the United States, fall trauma in hospitalized environments is a large issue that current infrastructure only passively addresses. Relevant current solutions include remote presence devices, bedside alert systems, and strength reliant assistive devices such as walkers and canes. While these product do a good job of mobilizing hospital infrastructure in response to a fall incident, they depend on caregivers and do not mitigate the damage already done.Although we are focused primarily on hospitalized, high-risk patients, although options with more autonomous elderly individuals / rehabilitation devices are also being explored. Alongside advising physicians in both U of M Geriatrics and U of M Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, our team emphasizes working closely with patients and caregivers to solidify the needs of these key users to help drive and engage our own design process. We hope to provide students opportunities to participate in all parts of the design process from needs assessment to prototyping, as well as chances to work side by side with healthcare partners and patients. Our goal is to ultimately design a device that not only makes life safer for older adult patients, but also to make caregivers’ jobs easier.
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# Graduate/Professional
# Science/Technology/Engineering
# Health & Wellness
# Service/Service Learning
