How to design medical equipment.

       First, I want to warn you that this one might ramble.  It might go long.  Bear with me.  Second, For the sake of full disclosure, I am not a designer.  I do not get paid to design smoothly arcing lines on a case.  If I did, there would not be any, but I'll cover that later.  What has been the source of my income, for the last decade and a half, has been fixing all the things that get broken, BECAUSE someone who does get paid to design them spent too much time making the case "sexy" and not enough studying how the damned thing would be used.  I am focusing on medical equipment, because that is my field, but I suspect there will be a host of technicians in every area nodding their collective heads to this.

       We will begin with a cute little anecdote I have.  A nurse, in the nursery, broke off a piece of the bassinet on an infant warmer.  She did this by pulling on it.  She was pulling on the bassinet because the designer apparently thought handles ruined the lines of their product.  The salesman came to see us and said: "Well, that isn't covered under warranty."  I said: "I know the nurse was negligent and should have just used the handle."  The idiot says: "Exactly".  The look on his face when I asked him to show the nurses, who were all gathered around, where the handles were, still makes me laugh.  (We got our parts covered, BTW).

       But that brings me to a point of explaining, how exactly, to design medical equipment.  First, if it isn't, literally, bolted to the floor, it is portable.  That is a fact of life.  Second, because it will be transported, it needs either a full internal frame, or a case equally as rigid as a full metal frame.  This is primarily because: Third, the highest, and outermost points of all equipment are handles.  

       What!? You didn't design handles there.  Well let me just go and change every single human being's habits.  Let me just put a sign on it that says "NOT A HANDLE", that will change thousands of years of habit.  Or, just maybe, you could watch how things are used before you start drawing.  And by the way, that handle better be part of the framing system.  I have seen this not be the case.  It went exactly like you'd expect.  

       Now I have to share a bit of the inner workings.  Hospitals are required to have all equipment inventoried, and periodic maintenance performed on nearly every piece.  Some items require stickers detailing the tested vs. expected outputs.  To that end, one would think these items would be designed with enough flat space to place these stickers.  Nope.  That would be a flat, boring, un-sexy case.  We can't have that.  

       So the case must be flat, or have sufficient flat space, to accommodate the required labeling.  The case should, while we are on the topic, be made of dyed plastic, or stainless steel.  This is because it also needs to resist the types of chemicals which are capable of killing today's super-bugs.  MRSA, C.diff, etc, are tough little buggers.  The things that can kill them, can also remove printing, paint, and most coloring from cases.  They will melt the bottoms of some shoes.  That is not a joke, I've seen it.  The accessories, and cables, also need to be made to resist these chemicals.  

       In the interest of not being destroyed by harsh cleaners, any open ports need to have a hinged, water resistant cover.  All bearings should also be weatherproof.  This is both to keep the chemicals out, and not give germs a place to hide.  

       Lastly, as a favor to the poor saps who get stuck working on your equipment, design it to be worked on.  It will break.  All things break.  Design it so we don't have to waste an hour taking it apart just to get to a fuse.  (Again, based on a real case).  

       Now there are a few companies that get it right, or at least mostly right.  But there are many more that don't.  And no, I'm not going to give an opinion, or name names.  Not here anyway.  

       So there you have it.  A comprehensive guide to correctly designing, and building, medical equipment.  I have given this out free of charge, in the hopes that some designer, somewhere, will think of what the thing is supposed to do, rather than how it looks.  This can be balanced, I've seen it done.