Safety of a Fully Powered Mechanical Patient Lift for Bariatric Patients

The work in this thesis was concerned with the safety evaluation of a fully powered mechanical patient lift for bariatric patients. A working prototype of this system, called RoboNurse, was designed and manufactured at iDAPT technology team at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. There are currently no lifting technologies similar to RoboNurse in the healthcare industry. The methods that are used to evaluate the system included: 1) Series of mechanical tests to evaluate the static strength and stability of the design 2) Computer simulations to evaluate the dynamic stability of the system and 3) Failure mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) as risk analysis tools. These techniques helped to perform thorough and systematic evaluations on the system and its components. This study significantly assisted in understanding the problems associated with the current design prototype and provided the necessary resources and guidelines for the future generations of this technology.MAS