A great concept Lachlan. What are three things that we can help you with? If you can specify a few tricky issues that you need assistance with we can better direct our supporters and resources to match the challenges you are facing with this project. 

Looking forward to seeing the project develop. 

Hi Lachlan, this is a very interesting and potentially innovative concept that could increase the happiness of elderly/injured people worldwide. I do have some questions about the stated concept that could be beneficial in the progression of your design.

Firstly defining what kinds of injury's/ illnesses and or age groups the design is aimed at, It is clear no single design will adhere to every persons need/wants, but it is important to further define the limitations of the prototype in order to improve it.

A real life example of where a limitation could be identified could be in elderly people, as you age parts of your body weakens and you may start to loose a sense of balance, how would the rotating part of the prototype benefit to people with balancing issues.

I can see you have created a human centered design which is awesome but further defining limitations of the stated design can only improve your quality of ideas.

I'm interested to see how the design has changed after a few months of tweaking, good luck and have fun with it (:

Hi Lachlan,

This is an interesting idea, as I myself have worked in aged care and have relations which have been injured in these particular scenarios. 

I have looked into the current lifting hoists used in aged cares globally - https://www.aidacare.com.au/products/manual-handling-transfer/lifters-patient-hoists

These hoist assist greatly into lifting patients safely out of bed and don't require much assistance from the nurses to lift. 

I see your idea has a rotating platform which would allow the patient, once seated to swivel around and lay down? From this aspect, I am unsure of how the patient may get into bed from this seat as their legs would be dangling, which would mean the nurse would have to lift them to get onto the bed. I know for the elderly this can be quite difficult as they are not strong and are quite frail.

- A design change for this could be a leg rest which folds up from the side, so once the patient has turned, the leg support could fold up under their legs.

- Additionally, a back rest would have to be installed between the two handles incase of the patient falling back when turning on the platform.

As for securing the mechanism to the bed, straps may not be sufficient to secure it and the bed frame may give way if a large patient uses the mechanism. The guidelines for this can be found in AS/NZ ISO 10535-2011 Australian standards and as you are dealing with aged patients, there are a range of compliances in which the product must meet.

- As the handrails are removeable, their is potential for them to fail/ release which would allow for the patient to fall out, becoming an additional hazard.

Overall, I think you are on the right track, but there may need to be some tweaks to comply with the standards and ensure the product does what it is intended for without being a hazard.

Great Job!

Good evening Lachlan. 

Sending out a little UpRising news update. 

Congratulations Lachlan you are nearly there.

If you could update the image on your Post to show a little collage of your projects development that would be fantastic. We will be awarding the top three UpRising design projects for 2024 and the UpRising alliance and community love to see the journey of your design.

There is a little feedback survey, if you could fill it in that would fantastic as it really helps us to understand how we can better help next years design students.

https://forms.gle/XLgNBqQepAw2Go5q7

It also has an option for you to select if you would like to continue to be involved in UpRising next year and beyond. Lots of interesting ways to continue to build connections within the design industry. Great for your resume and career paths.

Wishing you all the best with your trials and finishing touches on your MDP.

Shout out if we can help in any way.