Development of customized support for the prevention of Pressure Ulcer (PU) using multi-materials printing

Pressure Ulcers (PU) seems to be one of the most challenging healthcare problems around the world. It may result in significant morbidity, mortality and is associated with high cost in terms of treatment and care. PU is considered to be the third most expensive disorder after cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Though, modern medical science has launched a variety of treatment methods, prevention is the best way to overcome. As it could be seen from the current market design, most of the products provide a cushioning effect to the end user, but this lacks in product customization. Further, these products are not custom made to meet the end user needs and these products are expensive to be used. Understanding the above intricacies, the current research is focused entirely to be different from the existing product design, working, manufacturing methods and materials for the development of a product to redistribute the pressure for the reduction of PU. The projected design purely depends only on mechanical materials and mechanical behaviors. In this work, the number of phases of design was carried out through Solid Works software. The deformation and stress analysis was carried for all the design phases for obtaining the better design. Finally, the prototype is developed through Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology with the multi-material combination. The final prototype was evaluated experimentally using emed® sensing platform for the flexibility and pressure distribution also compared with the existing cushions.