She'll Be Right, M8

Howard Wright wins top Aus­tralian Inter­na­tional Design Award with M8 med­ical bed.

Howard Wright’s M8 crit­ical care med­ical bed has won its fourth design award by win­ning the top award at the Aus­tralian Inter­na­tional Design Awards on Fri­day, June 4.

To date, the M8 has also won the pres­ti­gi­ous inter­na­tional iF design award, a Red Dot design award from the Germany-based Red Dot Insti­tute, and an award in the Best Design Awards run by the Design­ers Insti­tute of New Zealand. The string of design awards for the innov­at­ive M8, and the num­ber of Aus­tralasian orders, has proven that Howard Wright’s design-led approach is pay­ing off, says Howard Wright’s chief exec­ut­ive officer, Bruce Moller.

“Howard Wright has always been focused on design innov­a­tion ever since the com­pany pro­duced the world’s first hydraulic oper­ated med­ical bed back in the 1960s,” says Moller. "Since we under­took a Bet­ter By Design pro­gramme in 2005, the M8 has been the first med­ical bed that we’ve taken through a full design pro­cess involving more than three years of research and devel­op­ment with 10 pro­to­types.” (Stu­dio Alex­an­der was respons­ible for imple­ment­ing brand strategy, iden­tity and col­lat­eral design. Read the case study.)

With a design philo­sophy of “mak­ing human care easier”, what’s innov­at­ive about the M8 is that it allows for a wide range of pro­ced­ures to be per­formed on the bed without the need to trans­fer the crit­ical care patient.

A prime example is its radi­olu­cent deck which allows X-ray and C-arm ima­ging cap­ab­il­it­ies without shift­ing the patient. Such atten­tion to detail given to all aspects of the bed includ­ing its aes­thet­ics, choice of mater­i­als, func­tion­al­ity, safety as well as com­fort for all users of the bed, impressed the Aus­tralian design judges.

“Superb func­tion­al­ity, soft-touch sur­faces and invited aes­thet­ics are the cul­min­a­tion of a ground-up, human-centred approach to design,” com­men­ted the judges. “For a low pro­duc­tion run product, the M8 intens­ive care bed rep­res­ents the work of an excep­tional com­pany driven to lead by design.”

For Howard Wright’s research and devel­op­ment man­ager Anthony Bat­ley, the M8 embod­ies Howard Wright’s simple, smart, human design approach.

“Our design pro­cess con­sidered every­one who would come in con­tact with the M8 includ­ing the patient, the med­ical spe­cial­ists, the order­lies and clean­ers — even friends and fam­ily vis­it­ing the patient!” explains Batley.

An onboard rechargeable bat­tery means the M8 can be wheeled into X-Ray and oper­ated without hav­ing to be con­nec­ted to an external power source. Once there, the M8’s unique tele­scopic pil­lars at either end of the bed, its asym­met­ric design and radi­olu­cent deck mean the bed can be raised for X-ray and C-arm ima­ging cap­ab­il­it­ies without shift­ing the patient.

Using a simple keypad, its fully elec­tric func­tion­al­ity means the M8 can be recon­figured to a car­diac chair, into trendelen­burg or reverse trendelen­burg pos­i­tions, raise the lower leg or the upper body, or raise and lower the height of the bed overall. With patient hand­ling and lift­ing a key issue for med­ical pro­fes­sion­als today, this means the M8 dra­mat­ic­ally reduces the amount of manual hand­ling for 99% of patients world­wide. This cov­ers the shortest or smal­lest patients up to the largest and tallest patients at 250 kg in weight or up to 2.2 metres in height.

Mov­ing and sta­bil­ising the M8 has also been made easier for the orderly and smoother for patient with the latest gen­er­a­tion of Tente linea castors and a stand­ard 5th wheel. A cent­ral lock­ing and brak­ing sys­tem can be oper­ated at either end of the bed. A full range of accessor­ies can also be bundled with the M8 such as IV poles, a mon­itor tray, and three sizes of oxy­gen bottle holders.

The M8’s design innov­a­tions have also been recog­nised with a good ini­tial order book since it was offi­cially launched late last year. In Decem­ber, 2009, the M8 was selec­ted as the sole pro­vider in the West­ern Aus­tralian Pub­lic Health Unit’s (WAPHU) con­tract for crit­ical care beds.

The WAPHU con­tract means Howard Wright is the sole pre­ferred sup­plier for more than 170 crit­ical care beds fore­cast over the next five years across the West­ern Aus­tralian Depart­ment of Health’s 11 main hos­pit­als as well as regional health centres.

Howard Wright has also been named a pre­ferred sup­plier with its M7 gen­eral ward bed, its M7 stretch­ers and exam­in­a­tion couches, and for its PREMA Advanced III mattress.

In addi­tion, the M8 has been ordered by South­ern Cross Hos­pit­als and the Hawkes Bay and Auck­land Dis­trict Health Boards.