Medical Cooler

The focus of the master’s thesis is to design a medical cooler for personal use with improved cooling capacity and improved reliability. The product segment was highlighted by friends prescribed with temperature sensitive bio-pharmaceuticals as to some extent reduce the quality of life. The mentioned experiences regarding the product indicated a product segment with poor performance and aesthetics. The insufficient cooling capacity of the medical coolers was especially experienced on long duration travels. It had sometimes lead to a state where the medication, which are to be taken regularly, was left at home during the sojourn even though the health was put at risk.

The product development was approached by an iterative process, which was initiated with a thorough literature and user study in order to define the system surrounding the product and the demands put on the medical cooler. Several concepts of medical coolers were created in order to explore, study and identify the different areas of potential product improvements. The concepts were analyzed and evaluated using prototypes and other methods in order to select a final concept. As the final concept was translated from sketches to CAD models the concept went through an iterative refinement process. In order to properly evaluate the cooling capacity and user experience of the final concept,a functional prototype was created.The final concept, Away, features a reliable medical cooler specifically designed for injection pens with bio-pharmaceutical substances. Away possess an improved design that extends the cooling time and enhances the overall user experience both by intuitive layout and appealing appearance. The design of Away is adapted to the use scenario of aircraft traveling and is developed to be easy to handle during the entire traveling scenario.

The findings of the master’s thesis indicate that there is great potential of improving the cooling capacity and user experience within the area of medical coolers. The thesis also demonstrates the possibility to take an important step towards improving the everyday life and patient security for users prescribed with bio pharmaceuticals.