Patient-centered Orthopedic Platform for Pre- and Post-Surgical Journey

Mentor: Jacky Bourgeois

Background: Zimmer Biomet are transforming the surgical journey and patient care with ZBEdge, their suite of integrated digital technologies, robotics, implant solutions, and consultancy services. The mymobility care management platform is a core data technology of Zimmer Biomet to address the pre- and post-operative phases of a surgical journey. Its patient-facing side usually works on mobile devices and provides education and guidance to patients via text and videos while allowing patients to communicate remotely with their care teams. It empowers patients to take an active role in their recovery. For the care teams, it provides constant updates on how their patients are doing since it collects mobility and patient-reported data (surveys). mymobility is present in 22 countries across five continents and already helped dozens of thousands of patients.

Goal: While technically robust, Zimmer Biomet's solution won’t deliver its promised efficiency without providing and communicating high value to patients and hospitals to make them both actively engaged. We are looking for two master's students to work collaboratively to understand what matters to patients concerning mymobility and how it impacts the future development and implementation of the platform. From an IPD perspective, we need to understand the complete implementation of mymobility from the perspective of the clinician, the patient, and Zimmer Biomet. What are the benefits of this full implementation? From an SPD perspective, we need to understand the health-economic value of mymobility for the different stakeholders and how to show this to hospitals and policymakers.

Methods: As part of the Data-Centric Design lab, you apply, experiment and further develop method and tools to facilitate the use of behavioral data as participatory design material. 

Impact: a successful project will lead to a clearly defined proposition in which users can recognise value to actively engage and appreciate the benefits in the form of quality of life (patients) and care delivery (care givers) support.

Relevance: While many healthcare and medical company are shifting toward services, much is to learn on how to design these digital transitions in a responsible and meaningful way. It is a unique opportunity to experiment with data-centric design methods in an industry context.