Rethinking Mobility Inside Hospitals
Across modern hospitals, one of the most overlooked challenges is also one of the most operationally disruptive: moving patients. The journey from admission to diagnosis, treatment, and recovery often requires a patient to be transferred multiple times — from bed to wheelchair, wheelchair to stretcher, to imaging table, operating room surface, or birthing chair. Each of these movements is not just time-consuming but inherently risky. Manual transfers strain nursing staff, increase the chance of injury to caregivers, and compromise patient safety and dignity, especially in emergency and post-operative contexts.
Despite advancements in medical diagnostics, treatment planning, and surgical robotics, patient mobility systems remain fragmented, mechanical, and outdated. Most facilities still rely on a patchwork of legacy equipment — separate beds, chairs, lifts — none of which are designed to work together, and all of which require physical handling. The inefficiency is structural.
Recognizing this gap, a medtech start-up approached Goken with a bold ask: engineer a fully electric, integrated mobility platform that could unify over a dozen patient-handling use-cases into one intelligent, reliable system — all within a compressed 20-week delivery timeline. There was no legacy system to build from, no competitive benchmark, and no partial prototype. It had to be engineered from scratch. What followed was an intense, cross-functional design sprint pushing the limits of medical-grade hardware engineering, systems thinking, and manufacturability.
Defining the Problem: Design One System That Does the Work of Five
The engineering brief was both technically demanding and clinically non-negotiable. The client needed a platform that could function across thirteen distinct medical scenarios — including stretcher transport, adjustable hospital bed configurations, upright wheelchair posture, and even birthing modes — with seamless electric articulation and dual user control (for both patient and caregiver). Every mode had to meet hospital-grade reliability standards, align with FDA safety guidelines, and integrate smoothly with different departmental workflows.
Furthermore, the design needed to optimize for manufacturability. That meant minimizing custom part count, reducing BOM complexity, and ensuring that 90% of the sourcing could be achieved through existing vendor channels.
Our Approach: Systems Engineering at Startup Speed
To meet these demands, Goken assembled an elite eight-member multi-disciplinary team encompassing mechanical system designer, electrical design engineer, embedded systems developer, human-machine interface (HMI) programmer, and program manager. From day one, we operated under a systems engineering model, segmenting the project into parallel subsystems — chassis, motion and rotation, control, HMI, and power — and deploying concurrent development sprints. Weekly clinical review sessions with healthcare practitioners ensured design decisions stayed grounded in real-use scenarios, while early-stage CAE (computer-aided engineering) simulations accelerated validation cycles.
Instead of a linear prototype cycle, we adopted a rapid-deployment loop, moving quickly from CAD to bench prototypes, then iterating based on integration feedback. This allowed subsystems to evolve simultaneously while staying structurally and electronically aligned.
Engineering Wins: What We Engineered Under Pressure
What emerged in just 20 weeks was a fully integrated, electric multi-mode patient mobility system that exceeded core requirements across all engineering and usability benchmarks.
First, the platform successfully consolidated thirteen medically relevant functions — typically spread across four to five separate devices — into a single hardware unit with seamless electric control. The system featured a three-joint articulation mechanism that enabled smooth transitions between sitting, reclining, and birthing postures. This was achieved using a dual-motor system that added redundancy in compliance with FDA guidance, ensuring continued motion capability even under partial failure conditions.
Second, we engineered an advanced electric mobility chassis capable of precise navigation within tight hospital corridors. By integrating both infrared and proximity-based sensors, the unit could operate in either caregiver-led or semi-autonomous navigation modes. Smart bumpers with programmable deceleration logic prevented unsafe movement and allowed the system to adapt to unpredictable floor layouts, carts, and patient flow dynamics.
Third, our lateral transfer and bed rotation module allowed for 360-degree rotation and seamless side transfer — all electrically actuated, eliminating the need for any manual lifting. This was a major leap forward for safety, especially in ICU and surgical contexts where patient fragility is high.
The HMI system was designed with dual interfaces — one tactile (featuring joysticks and physical buttons for fast, intuitive control) and one digital (touchscreen with programmable presets). An emergency override cluster allowed caregivers to instantly flatten the platform or lock motion under code-red conditions. Every interaction was routed through a layered control logic that ensured safe operating states were always preserved.
And crucially, the entire system was engineered using mostly standard parts: over 90% of the bill of materials was sourced from off-the-shelf components, drastically reducing lead times, inventory complexity, and long-term service risk.
Design Constraints Solved: What Made This Hard — and How We Solved It
There was no baseline. This was a clean-sheet product with no prior version or competitive benchmark. Every mechanical assembly, every electric interface, every interaction model had to be architected from scratch.
User diversity had to be baked in. We designed for two sets of users — medical staff and patients — each with very different needs, priorities, and risk tolerances. Balancing simplicity with control complexity required deep HMI co-design.
The product had to perform in multiple clinical environments, from fast-paced ER triage rooms to controlled operating theaters to labor and delivery suites. That meant variable room sizes, surface conditions, and power constraints — all of which had to be accounted for in testing and control logic.
Cost sensitivity remained front and center. Despite its innovation mandate, the product had to make financial sense. This required ruthless discipline in design-for-manufacturing (DFM), modular architecture, and reliance on commercial-grade components wherever feasible.
Space and clearance tolerances were non-negotiable. With patient weights up to 250 lbs and surface transitions across linoleum, tile, and lift platforms, our system had to function with just 3cm clearance — which required precise wheelbase planning and chassis geometry simulation.
The schedule was brutally compressed. Only 20 weeks were available to go from napkin sketch to integrated demo. We mitigated this through parallel development tracks, early design freezes on high-risk modules, and real-time subsystem coordination between teams.
Why This Case Study Matters for Healthcare and Medtech Leaders
The story here is not just about solving a technical problem. It’s about reimagining how engineering can serve healthcare at scale. By unifying fragmented mobility systems into one intelligent, electric platform, we helped redefine how hospitals can manage care flows, staff safety, and capital investment.
For medical device OEMs and hospital innovation leads, this case study demonstrates that it is possible — with the right engineering strategy and execution — to build complex, FDA-aligned systems that perform across departments, reduce equipment clutter, and improve outcomes.
For engineers, it’s a template for how to manage high-function projects under compressed timelines — through integrated thinking, systems architecture, and non-stop iteration grounded in end-user reality.
