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  • Letter to the Editor
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Encouraging developments in incubator design

Journal of Perinatology volume 33, page 990 (2013)Cite this article

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We would like to acknowledge and applaud the efforts of Goossens and Willemsen1 as well as BabyBloom Healthcare for the design and development of their neonatal incubator, which has recently become available on the European market. Similar to our recent incubation system research and design project,2 BabyBloom’s incubator was designed using a ‘human-centered’ approach, as detailed in Willemsen’s master thesis.3 While the data collection and analysis methods differed somewhat between our independent efforts, both efforts followed a design philosophy that focused on supporting the needs of select user groups, as opposed to the more traditional design approaches that tend to be driven by the technical capabilities of existing technologies (i.e., a ‘technology-centered’ approach). Both efforts also emphasized that the needs of not only the neonatal patient but also of family members and medical personnel should be considered in the design process in order to support a well-functioning ‘incubation system’.2

It is encouraging but not wholly surprising to see that some of the concluding design recommendations we offer in Ferris and Shepley2 are similar to those implemented in the BabyBloom design, such as including sound monitoring capabilities and video feeds to support nonintrusive viewing of the infants, as well as taking efforts to make the incubator exterior more aesthetically pleasing and comforting for both patients and families. Our parallel human-centered analyses also identified many of the same important design problems (such as inadequate protection from lighting and sound levels that are above recommended limits), even if there were broad differences in the way the problems were addressed. One factor that likely affected the breadth of design solutions is that the students conducting the design project in Ferris and Shepley2 were not required to directly consider the component or manufacturing costs for their designs and in fact were encouraged for some project phases to provide ‘sky is the limit’ solutions that were unconstrained by costs. Obviously, BabyBloom needed to consider component and manufacturing costs in the process of bringing their design to market, which undoubtedly made the design problem more challenging. The fact that they have successfully met their design goals while remaining economically viable can serve to validate and reinforce the value of the human-centered design approach. Indeed, as Goossens and Willemsen suggest,1 with the growing commercial availability of the BabyBloom and other next-generation incubators we may now be starting to realize much-needed and overdue changes in the fundamental design of incubator technologies by following a more human-centered design approach.

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References

  1. Goossens RHM, Willemsen H . Human centred incubator—beyond a design concept. J Perinatol. (this issue).

  2. Ferris TK, Shepley MM . The design of neonatal incubators: a systems-oriented, human-centered approach. J Perinatol 2013; 33 (Suppl 1): S24–S31.

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  3. Willemsen H Design of a Child- and Parent- Friendly Incubator. December 16 2005 Delft University of Technology. (On-line Abstract http://afstudeerdb.io.tudelft.nl/bekijken.php?afstudeernummer=3102).

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  1. Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    T K Ferris & M M Shepley

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  1. T K Ferris
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  2. M M Shepley
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Correspondence to T K Ferris.

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Ferris, T., Shepley, M. Encouraging developments in incubator design. J Perinatol 33, 990 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/jp.2013.102

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