Designing functional medical products for children with cancer

This paper details how Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has been used to develop a tactile advanced product for a medical application. Innovative experimental and industrial research was undertaken, leading to the design of a child-focused ‘Wiggle Bag’, which can be used to safely harness and reduce infection at the site of a venous catheter placed in the chest wall of long-term child cancer sufferers. Children with cancer regularly have long-term central venous catheters inserted through their upper chest wall to deliver medication. They can result in medical issues, particularly infections or accidental removal, but also discomfort for the children, particularly when sleeping. The research uses an abductive approach, triangulating various research strategies, including questionnaires, focus groups and interviews from parents, carers and medical personnel. QFD was used to bring together the key findings from the primary data analysis to establish an ergonomic design criteria and inform the product development.