Designing with empathy: the wearable for heart health
Sona by Luisa Ebeling shows that the future of medical devices will leverage artificial intelligence through an empathy-driven design process to achieve excellence in early diagnosis of fatal diseases like CVDs.
There are certain diseases that can’t be detected early on due to ambiguous symptoms, a lack of research and awareness, or simply because their warning signs are disregarded. Addressing this issue, graduate Luisa Ebeling from Umeå Institute of Design Master’s Program Advanced Product Design developed Sona, a wearable device that can detect early signs of cardiovascular diseases with ultrasound technology.
Luisa developed this concept in collaboration with the CIMT Research Group at Norrlands University Hospital. The university provided her with the crucial statistics that formed the foundation of the project. “I was really shocked by the stats,” Luisa admits, recalling her initial research. “It is the top killer in the world, and it kills twice as many people as cancer. We have all these checkups for cancer, but there are no checkups for cardiovascular diseases.” This reality became the motivation behind her master’s thesis project, Sona.
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The project began with conversations she had with doctors, nurses, ultrasound specialists, and patients living with cardiovascular diseases. Through these sessions, she learned that contrary to the common belief, women, just as likely as men, can suffer from CVD. However, the symptoms of CVD in a female’s body often resemble mental disorders, according to the story of a female patient who was falsely diagnosed with depression while she was actually suffering from CVD.
“Heart attacks, for men, we just know this cinematic shot of grabbing your chest in a lot of pain. But for women, it is way more subtle. It feels like extreme fatigue. And then symptoms like that are similar to depression, women are also just a bit more likely to not be taken seriously.” Luisa explains. These stories revealed that the problem was deeply humane, and she acted on it by questioning “How could people feel empowered to take control of their own heart health in a private, accessible and trustworthy way?”.
Project Sona uses the high potential of ultrasound technology. “Currently, ultrasound imaging requires bulky and specialized equipment available only in hospitals and doctors’ offices. But a new design by MIT engineers might make the technology as wearable and accessible as buying Band-Aids at the pharmacy.” MIT News Officer Jennifer Chu reports.
Luisa is integrating this recent funding in the form of a gel pad inside the Sona neck cuff. These gel pads play the key role of detecting the early arterial plaque buildup that causes cardiovascular diseases. She saw the design opportunity that the new technology brings and transformed clinical giant machines into a self-care product that could potentially save lives.
Sona was strategically designed as a neck wearable in light of the information that the ultrasound specialists provided, which is that the most effective location for detecting arterial plaque is the neck. This neck-cuff design gives a sense of familiarity to the user with its reminiscence of on-ear headphones. The cuff design was carefully shaped in a way that requires minimal mobility of the user, considering the age and physical capabilities of the user group. Luisa intended the final neck-cuff design to appear gender neutral, which led to the decisions of a widely recognized sleek form and clean material finish.
The research center that Luisa worked with throughout the project developed a visionary AI software that can look at the ultrasound images of the neck area and detect atherosclerotic buildup or narrowing. After the examination, the designated app shows the user the level of CVD risk by stating low risk, middle risk or high risk and matches the user with a specialist to manage the next steps. The communication of the results in the app involves high sensitivity since the results carry a deep significance for the patient.
Sona is a project where one can question the role of artificial intelligence in the healthcare sector, the importance of an empathy-driven design process, the stance of medical professionals about gender equality, and the life-saving importance of early diagnosis.
