People with functional disabilities, and who are staying in their own homes or in nursing homes, often receive help to get out of bed, to use the toilet or to get in and out of the shower. Transferring patients is a task that home-care personnel typically do several times a day. It is estimated that in Denmark alone more than 29 million assisting tasks are performed each year. It means that every employee of the Danish social and health service on average performs 265 such tasks per year.

Transferring patients is a physically demanding and time-consuming task and hence several municipalities have adopted a policy saying that there must be two caregivers assigned to each transfer. The caregivers use transfer equipment such as ceiling lifts with sails and mobile hoists. However, many of the solutions available today do not take into account the element of participation and weight bearing capacity of the patient that can be applied during a transfer. Often, the lifting process places the patient in an awkward body position.

Objective: Launching new technology onto the market

Based on the above needs and a high demand among health-care professionals, Patient@home - lead by the company Ergolet A/S - will concentrate on the development of a new hoisting technology to ensure that patients are transferred in a dignified and safe manner, while minimising the caregivers' physical resources. In addition, the technology will include and increase the patients' physical skills, and also be adapted to their natural movement patterns - i.e. the way they would normally get up and move.

The project is based on a development process that is strongly aimed at the needs assessment phase in order to obtain a thorough understanding of the needs of the user and the caregiver in a hoisting situation. The project will therefore continuously involve relevant stakeholders and boost ideation, development, evaluation and testing of mock-ups in iterative processes.

The project is expected to run till the end of 2016, when Ergolet A/S plans to launch a radical new assistive transfer technology on the market - based on the results achieved within the framework of Patient @ home.