Live Well Design Project Named Finalist in IDEA Competition

A project by UC faculty and students to design a better hospital gown recently made it to the finalist round in the prestigious International Design Excellence Awards, the Olympics of industrial design.

More than 1,600 professional and student designers from around the world entered this year's International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), sponsored by BusinessWeek magazine and the Industrial Designers Society of America.

The IDEA contest is the premiere, international competition honoring excellence in products, ecodesign, interaction design, packaging, strategy, research and concepts.

And from among those entries, fewer than 350 were selected as finalists. Among the finalist entries was a project stemming from a University of Cincinnati collaborative with business to heal the many ills of the hated hospital gown.

The project, called the Progressive Recovery Collection, was the result of an unusual, ongoing business-university model headquartered at UC called the Live Well Collaborative. The model works quite simply.

International firms who are part of the Live Well consortium work with UC students and faculty in conducting research and developing ideas, making use of internationally ranked expertise on campus in the fields of design, engineering, business, medicine, anthropology and more.

It's an innovation incubator, and the hospital gown project came out of that incubator as part of a partnership with Hill-Rom Company, Inc., of Batesville, Ind., a maker of hospital beds and medical equipment.

Hospital gowns
The Live Well hospital gown project resulted in a series of gowns, to be worn depending on the condition of the patient: One gown for a bedridden patient, gowns for a somewhat mobile patient; and one gown for the fully ambulatory patient.
With guidance from Hill-Rom, medical professionals, former hospital patients and others, a handful of UC faculty teamed with about 30 students to create the Progressive Recovery Collection, a series of hospital gowns to meet the needs of patients at different stages in the treatment and recovery process.

The gown series consists of

  • One gown for seriously ill bed ridden patients.
  • Another gown for the somewhat mobile patient.
  • A third gown for the fully ambulatory.


Gown for the seriously ill bedridden patient

The most important thing for a bedridden patient is to prevent pressure ulcers, according to Brooke Brandewie, a student who graduated from the product-development track of UC's fashion design program in June 2008 and who is now working at the Live Well Collaborative as a design research associate.

"We created a gown that will allow the mattress to be the mattress. The gown is open backed for high-risk, immobile patients so the areas on the body (most susceptible to pressure ulcers) can be healed from the mattress technology, without fabric bunching in between," Brandewie explained.

In addition, this gown (and the others created by the students) provides easy access at the shoulder - via slits and closures in the design - so that caregivers may operate IV units or other drug-delivery tools.

The students recommend that this gown - and the related versions - be made from naturally anti-microbial materials like bamboo or crabyon (a material actually made from crab shells).

UC's Margaret Voelker-Ferrier, professor of fashion design, said, "Such materials cut down on bacteria. This helps ensure the health of a patient and also cuts down on any body odors."
Hospital gowns
Views of the UC-developed gowns: One for a bedridden patient; gowns for a somewhat mobile patient; and a gown for the fully ambulatory patient.


The gown that serves as a "reward" for the improving patient

There's nothing as comfortable as a bath robe, or your own clothes that you wear at home. And that's the inspiration behind a gown created by the UC students for the semi-mobile patient. It mimics "comfort clothes."

Said Brandewie, "As the patient improves in condition, they will 'graduate' to the next gown appropriate for their condition and mobility. It not only represents the patient's progressive physical improvement, it provides a psychological boost as well," said Brandewie.

Like all the UC-created gowns, it closes not via standard ties currently in use with hospital gowns but via a closure like a bathrobe belt. It's secure, comfortable, can fit to almost any size and is also more flattering to the human figure.

The gown has a full back and a kangaroo pocket in the front, recognizing that the patient will lie in bed, sit in a chair, stand and walk. Portions of the gown are made of special material to wick away moisture and sweat.

And in recognition of the reality that patients sitting or resting will be colder than those on the move, this gown comes with accessories: A scarf with a pocket, arm warmers, leg warmers and shawl, all made of bamboo jersey to integrate both extreme softness and anti-bacterial characteristics.

Explained Brandewie, "We created the accessories to serve both caregivers and care recipients. The pockets in items are necessary because patients really don't have a space that's always within reach for the small items they use and want, like a phone, chapstick and iPod. In hospitals, we found that nurses and patients were improvising with mini purses tied to the side of the bed for extra storage and were cutting up old socks for arm warmers. And a patient with a shawl doesn't have to call for a blanket and wait for it to be delivered."
The hospital gown group
The students and some of the faculty who worked on the Live Well hospital gown project.


Ambulatory separates

The fully mobile patient could wear crop pants with a gown top. For comfort and care, these crop pants feature a stretch-jersey waist that is comfortable (and expands and contracts to fit a variety of sizes). Each leg of the calf pants has snaps along the outside seam in order to accommodate braces or swelling. The shorter length of the calf pants also ensure that patients won't trip over the hem.