Evaluation of a novel stair-climbing transportation aid for emergency medical services
-
Mark Verjans
,
Philipp Schleer
Abstract
Acute and planned transportations of patients are major tasks for emergency medical services (EMS) and often result in substantial physical strains with a major impact on the workers’ health, because current transportation aids cannot provide sufficient support, especially on stairs. A new stair-climbing and self-balancing approach (SEBARES) has been developed and its usability is evaluated in the context of this paper. Twelve participants operated a prototype in a transportation scenario and user forces, user joint angles and the perceived usability were evaluated. Results show that user forces were within long-term acceptable ergonomic limits for over 90% of the transportation time and a mainly healthy upright posture of the back could be maintained. This resulted in a healthy working posture for 85% of the time, according to the OWAS method, and a good perceived usability. A comparison to the most ergonomic aid according to literature, a caterpillar stair chair, reveals that similar upright postures are assumed, while the operation of SEBARES required only 47% of the forces to operate the caterpillar stair chair. A comparison to a previous field study indicates a reduction of strenuous working postures by a factor of three, which further confirms the ergonomic advantages of this concept.
Funding source: European Regional Development Fund
Funding source: German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully thank the department of orthopedic surgery at the Uniklinik RWTH Aachen for providing the inertial measurement system. This study was conducted in the context of the SEBARES cooperation project between the Chair of Medical Engineering of RWTH Aachen University and the industrial partners SurgiTAIX AG, Herzogenrath, and Stollenwerk and Cie GmbH, Cologne.
Research funding: This project was supported by the European Regional Development Fund and the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Author contributions: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.
Competing interest: Authors state no conflict of interest.
Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individuals included in this study.
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© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Review
- Surrogate based continuous noninvasive blood pressure measurement
- Research Articles
- Smart automated heart health monitoring using photoplethysmography signal classification
- In vivo evaluation of two adaptive Starling-like control algorithms for left ventricular assist devices
- A patient-independent classification system for onset detection of seizures
- Prediction of salivary cortisol level by electroencephalography features
- Confocal laser microscopy without fluorescent dye in minimal-invasive thoracic surgery: an ex-vivo pilot study in lung cancer
- Spinal cord segmentation and injury detection using a Crow Search-Rider optimization algorithm
- Experimental and numerical investigations of fracture and fatigue behaviour of implant-supported bars with distal extension made of three different materials
- Compression and tension behavior of the prosthetic foam materials polyurethane, EVA, Pelite™ and a combination of polyurethane and EVA: a preliminary study
- Evaluation of a novel stair-climbing transportation aid for emergency medical services
