Work in this category will strive to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all. This is precisely what Outcare provides to its users. In other words, Outcare transforms lives by enabling electro-dependent children not only to survive but to truly live. It liberates individuals from the confines of four walls, significantly enhances the quality of life for entire families, and integrates children with chronic illnesses into society. Outcare merges engineering, medicine, and familial insights to create an autonomous station with all necessary devices into a single unit. This allows electro-dependent children to experience the joys of outdoor childhood.

Our client, Hospital Samaritano, operates an Intestinal Rehabilitation Center that treats electro-dependent children with Short Bowel Syndrome.

In Brazil, hospital and home care services for electro-dependent children are highly regulated. Even after discharge from the hospital, the doctor is obligated to monitor the patient in home care, and only with their authorization can they leave their house.

A mother of a patient refused to confine her child within four walls and began developing a solution to provide more autonomy to her child and allow him to leave the house.

The hospital's team approached us seeking assistance. Thus, we developed a secure device that complies with all applicable laws and regulations to ensure the safety and well-being of hospital patients.

Sustainability is the client's ambition for strategic, long-term growth, embedded in their businesses and intrinsically linked by a common mission to help people live healthier lives and make the health system work better for everyone. Their four sustainability priorities reflect contemporary challenges, including social inequities, climate change, and access to affordable, high-quality medical care.

In other words, this work fit perfectly with the brand's objectives by offering patients with Ultra-Short Bowel Syndrome the opportunity to enhance the quality of life for entire families and integrate children with chronic illnesses into society. Essentially, Outcare ensures healthy lives and promotes well-being for Hospital Samaritano patients.

As previously stated, sustainability is the client's ambition for strategic growth, embedded in their businesses by a common mission to help people live healthier lives and make the health system work better for everyone.

That's why they have an Intestinal Rehabilitation Center that treats electro-dependent children with Short Bowel Syndrome.

But, in Brazil, hospital and home care services for electro-dependent children are highly regulated. Even after discharge from the hospital, the doctor is obligated to monitor the patient in home care, and only with their authorization can they leave their house.

A mother of a patient refused to confine her child within four walls and began developing a solution to provide more autonomy to her child and allow him to leave the house.

The hospital's team approached us seeking assistance. Thus, we developed a secure device that complies with all applicable laws and regulations to ensure safety and well-being.

In Brazil, home care services for electrodependent children are highly regulated. Even after discharge from hospital, the doctor is obliged to monitor the patient in home care and, only with his authorization, can they leave their house.

But more than 290,000 electro-dependent patients are estimated to live in Brazil, requiring constant connection to life-supporting machines. Among them are numerous children confined to indoor life, deprived of outdoor experiences.

The relevance of this project is not only about the impacted families' quality of life, but about a change in treating chronic diseases that proposes a change of mindset to, instead of keeping patients alive, keeping patients living.

For electro-dependent children, life is confined within four walls. Some may never experience the outdoors. In response, we created Outcare: the fist and only “one size fits all” independent station offering mobility for these children to enjoy outdoor childhood experiences — basking in the sun, interacting with peers, and joining family outings.

Compartments are meticulously designed to securely store each device, while the battery ensures a minimum of 12 hours of operation. Children under the care of Samaritano Hospital are currently using Outcare. A study was conducted to assess the improvement in the quality of life of patients who used the station, and it will be presented at a medical symposium in May, 2024.

We combined engineering, medicine, and family knowledge to create an independent station that accommodates all devices in one unit, providing electrical autonomy for outdoor childhood experiences for electro-dependent children.

The primary audience of this work was children with Short Bowel Syndrome. This product is significant for these patients because it allowed them to live life with more autonomy and freedom, something that was not possible due to laws and rules requiring home care patients to stay at home.

Along with the hospital's medical staff, we silently developed the MVP and prototype of the product. Only when development was complete did we deliver 50 units to 50 patients, inviting them to participate in a clinical study. Next, we intend to extend the offer to all patients with Short Bowel Syndrome in Brazil.

February 2021 – A multidisciplinary team, supported by Hospital Samaritano, developed a prototype for the first independent power station capable of safely housing up to 5 devices for 12 hours, thus enabling patient mobility.

June 2022 – Building on the project's insights, we refined the device housing, reducing the station's weight and size by 30%, and introduced a cover made from recycled PET bottles. We also met all the new safety requirements set by Samaritano Hospital's medical team, focusing on further reducing contamination risks and ensuring device stability.

November 2023 – Mass production commenced with 50 backpacks distributed to patients undergoing treatment at Hospital Samaritano, who participated in a clinical study aimed at measuring the extent to which freedom and contact with the outside world can improve patients' clinical and emotional conditions, potentially even extending their lifespans.

April 2024 - Patent filed within the National Institute of Intellectual Property.

Outcare has directly contributed to ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all patients at the Intestinal Rehabilitation Center of Hospital Samaritano. After the publication of the clinical study, all involved parties decided to make the project open source so that any patient can produce their own Outcare, with any supplier, anywhere in the world. Moreover, Outcare is proving capable of transforming the home care service in Brazil, showing that home care does not mean confinement and that living life freely improves patients' quality of life. The ultimate goal is to change legislation and offer Outcare through health insurance and public healthcare systems. Outcare has demonstrated its significance in revolutionizing Brazil's entire home care industry, emphasizing that true quality of life entails the freedom to live fully.

In addition to offering a better quality of life for patients, Outcare has also normalized electro-dependent patients and reintegrated them into society, helping to combat the stigma and discrimination associated with their condition, and creating a fairer and more inclusive society. In this way, Outcare has contributed to increasing awareness of the needs and challenges faced by electro-dependent patients, promoting a culture of empathy, understanding, and mutual support.

As mentioned earlier, all involved parties decided to make the project open source so that any patient can produce their own Outcare, with any supplier, anywhere in the world. After the publication of the clinical study, the ultimate goal is to change legislation and offer Outcare through health insurance and public healthcare systems.

Carbon emissions from this work were not measured. But in the production of the equipment, recycled PET plastic was used. Each backpack removed 24 plastic bottles from the environment, totaling more than 1,200 bottles in this first stage of the project.