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Gebruikerseisen van de LOPES

Janssen, K.A. (2011) Gebruikerseisen van de LOPES.

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Abstract:Growing staff shortages and the increasing demand for health care through (among other issues) the aging population creates the need for other methods and solutions to meet the demand for health care. One of the solutions could be robotics. One of the large and diverse group that is strongly increasing in size is the group of stroke patients. The rehabilitation process is intensive and often has multiple physical therapists involved. In order to improve the rehabilitation process and to reduce the burden for physical therapists, the University of Twente, in collaboration with DEMCON and MOOG, is developing a gait-training-robot, the LOwer- extremity Powered ExoSkeleton (LOPES). To ensure that the gait-training-robot meets the requirements of the user, the user requirements are investigated. To see which organizations, agencies and people are involved and can be defined as a user, a stakeholder analysis has been conducted. Subsequent to this analysis the following research question is defined: What are the user requirements of different stakeholders for the LOPES and how important and valid are these requirements compared to each other? To answer the main question several sub questions are defined: 1. What are the requirements of the LOPES and how are these requirements rated compared to each other when one uses the AHP method in a group? 2. What are the requirements to the LOPES when semi-structured interviews are used and which requirements are most important? 3. Which requirements, after adding or excluding requirements, are seen as most important in the Internet survey? 4. Is there a difference in perception when using an Internet survey with the added demands of the interviews compared with the AHP method; is one of those methods valid? Three different investigation methods are used to answer the sub questions; conducting a panel session with the AHP method in a group, several individual semi-structured interviews and an internet survey. The results of the internet-survey and the AHP method are compared with respect to the valuation of the user requirements. On this basis, statements are made about the validation of the resulting requirements for the user of the LOPES. The various methods used in determining the user requirements, show some differences in the results. It is clear that the following requirements, according to the sources consulted, are seen as the most valuable: - Weight Support and transition from track to send - Feedback - Physical load in and out easily and comfort - Efficiency - Safety Social experience and the influence of walking, with percentages of respectively 34.7 and 30.1, appear to be the most important goals according to the AHP-method. 6 In the analyses of the sub requirements between the AHP method and the Internet survey there are at least two sub requirements that score below the limit of 80% or above the limit of 125%.The main difference is found in the sub requirement of the influence of walking. The difference is 394.2% by the sub requirement ‘weight support’. Noticed is that with the use of the AHP-method the weight support scores the lowest but in the web survey this requirement gets the first rank. The results from the web survey and the panel-session with the AHP method appear to be different on some points. This may be due to a variation in the defined user requirements or the composition of the panel of respondents. Research on the representativeness of the group used for a panel session with the AHP-method would be good addition to the use of this method.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Health Sciences BSc (56553)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/63073
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