BME 260: Devices for People with Disabilities

BME 260, a capstone design course, is offered to engineering students at Duke University. Students are paired with health care professionals to build custom assistive, recreational, or therapeutic devices for people with disabilities in the local community. For example, students in fall 2008 modified a bike to allow a woman who was injured in an automobile accident to ride again.

Students teams design, build, test and deliver projects to clients in one semester. This involves a large commitment, but the results are worth it, as the client from a 2007 project noted:

Students enjoy the chance to apply their engineering skills to meet the need of an individual in the community:

During the spring semester, BME 260 is linked with a course at UNC/Chapel Hill, Rehabilitation Engineering Design (BMME 290), using a telecommunications classroom.

Please feel free to navigate this site and learn more about BME 260. On the site you will find links to past projects built at Duke. Clicking here will lead you to a site where you can search for projects built for people with disabilities at other universities with support from the National Science Foundation.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.