The future of beds for children in hospital
FOURWAYS– Your child should be comfortable and safe, when visiting the hospital.
Hip designer, Jed Aylmer (27) is dedicating his life to making the world a better, more practical and comfortable place.
He is the director of Praestet, which is a local medical design company. “We do the design, assembly and distribution of medical products,” said Aylmer who designed the Symba Paediatric Hospital Bed.
Symba beds were created to address the needs of medical professionals such as patient safety, functionality, hygiene, accessibility and mobility, which is something standard that is needed in medical equipment. “I wanted to consider some very important things – how to combine my passion for product and design with business and to create something that makes your heart feel good,” he said.
Aylmer studied product design for four years at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). He needed a final project and wasn’t sure what he was going to do. “I followed the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital on an architectural blog and this is how I thought of the bed,” he said.
Aylmer began communicating with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital staff and they assisted him with his research, and he worked closely with UJ for some of the initial engineering development.
He then selected an engineering company from Cape Town, BMEC Technologies, which handled the practical side and checked whether the product would be sustainable. The team re-did the product six times before they were completely happy, thus taking them two years to create the innovative medical bed. “We worked hard together and I think we brought the same amount of work and effort to the table.”
The bed that Aylmer designed is for children from six months up to six years of age. He added that the hospital staff that he had been working with and he himself almost cried when the final product became a reality, which was finally released at an opening ceremony in December last year.
A Symba bed is completely transparent so that doctors and nurses have clear sight, and it is designed to be accessible from all sides. It has no metal bars, making it feel more like home.
“I think I felt an immense amount of pride when they cut the ribbon, and knowing that the whole ceremony was [about] a product that my team and I had made and that it can make a difference, made me feel very excited for the future,” said Aylmer.
“It’s such a good place to be in, knowing that you are honouring Madiba’s legacy.”
Aylmer hopes the product will catch on and be distributed worldwide and comfort sick children.
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