Hands-off Healing
Curriculum focus activity
Nature of Technology:
- Characteristics of Technological Outcomes Levels 1 and 6
FOCUS QUESTIONS:
- What range of expertise and knowledge would be involved in the design and production of the SilhouetteMobile™?
- How can this product be viewed in terms of a system?
- Identify physical and functional attributes of the product/system.
LEVEL 1
Indicators of progression:
- Explain that technological outcomes are things that are designed and made by people and therefore are different to other material things that exist in the world.
- Describe technological outcomes in terms of their physical attributes. For example – shape, size, colour, material composition, component interconnections etc.
- Describe technological outcomes in terms of their functional attributes. For example – what the outcome can do and/or provides or cannot do and/or provide.
Related information from the case study includes:
The product is designed to be an improvement on existing medical systems.
The design/development team includes medical, electronics, software and production specialists
The device integrates a camera with a hand held computer. It is small enough to be able to be battery powered, light and robust and can be easily carried and cleaned. Data can be downloaded onto a desktop computer.
It takes pictures of the wound and accurately measures how well it is healing. The wound isn’t touched during the measurement process so this limits the chances of infection.
Information can be stored and later transferred to the hospital database
LEVEL 6
Indicators of progression:
- Understand the interconnectedness of some technological products and systems and the often ‘fluid’ boundaries between them.
- Understand that no technological outcome operates in isolation from other technologies and/or aspects of society and developing an understanding of how things interconnect allows the development of a holistic rather than reductionist view of the world.
Related information from the case study includes:
The SilhouetteMobile™ is linked to software based data management and post-processing systems.
The device incorporates a high-resolution digital camera which photographs the wound. Embedded laser lighting is utilised for automatic image calibration which enables the depth and area of the wound to be captured and displayed.
A stylus is used to draw around the image and the digital information is processed by software to provide a quantitative measurement of the extent of the wound.
The device incorporates a wireless modem. Data can be emailed or transferred directly through a docking device to the hospital database.
Processed information is displayed visually and can be compared with previously stored visual and digital data for ongoing recording and reporting of the healing process.
