This unusual chemotherapy chair was designed for patient comfort

Patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment get to know, and perhaps loathe, their chemotherapy chairs. The treatments typically consist of an intravenous infusion of drugs that attack fast-growing, often cancerous cells, and the patients receiving these drugs spend anywhere from a few minutes to several hours sitting in a hospital-grade chair. Treatment can last weeks, and the side effects of the drugs can be harrowing, which only makes the hours spent sitting in a bulky hospital chair even more unpleasant.



Tactile , a product design firm based in Seattle and Boston, has come up with an alternative chemotherapy chair design that tries to make the time spent receiving chemotherapy more comfortable.



Named Cove, the concept is a lounge-style reclining chair with built-in lighting and temperature control, space for storing personal items, a movable tray, and a winged back that give patients a sense of privacy. Informed by high-end home furnishings and first class airplane cabins, the design balances comfort and medical requirements with a focus on the user experience of having to sit in the chair for hours on end.



[Photo: Cove]



Designing a better chemotherapy chair



Tactile senior industrial designer Jacquie Phelps says the concept was instigated by the fact that one Tactile employee and the loved ones of several others were all recently undergoing chemotherapy. Experiencing the process firsthand, as both patient and caregiver, exposed the firm’s designers to some of the ways existing chemotherapy chairs made the process worse. “They felt like it was daunting and really something they dreaded going to,” Phelps says. “Obviously, some of that just has to do with side effects from the drugs, but part of it was also just the environment.”



Tactile has designed devices like a returnable cup kiosk for Starbucks and a digital level for Milwaukee Tool , and also has a specialty in designing hardware used in healthcare settings, like imaging instruments and surgical interfaces . Cove is the company’s first foray into medical furniture .



The design was based on user research, including chemotherapy patients and oncology nurses, who helped inform how patients tend to use the chairs during treatments. Chemotherapy, the designers learned, can leave many patients feeling cold, so Tactile designed heat controls into the seat. Patients tend to bring personal items into their hours-long sessions but have nowhere to store them, so the chairs were designed to include cubby-like storage areas under the armrests—big enough to hold a bag or some books but not so big that they’d get in the way of nurses.



Even something as simple as lighting was seen as a major improvement on the typical chemo chair design. “Depending upon the facility you may not have a lot of control over the lighting, and so we felt like integrating both reading lights and a work lamp would be nice ways to just give patients more ownership over the experience and how they wanted to use the furniture,” Phelps says.



[Photo: Cove]



New and improved features



A distinguishing design feature is the privacy paneling at the head of the chair. These wings act like oversize blinders, blocking a patient’s view and providing a sense of shelter, while still being able to fold flat and out of sight. Having the potential for both conditions was a big piece of feedback the designers heard during their research. “Some patients really talked about wanting to interact with others in the room. Some people form friendships with other patients that are going through that experience. And others really valued the privacy and really just wanted to feel like they had their own space,” says Phelps.



The hinged privacy panels are also designed with medical concerns in mind. Should a patient require a medical intervention or CPR, the panels can be easily folded flat and the chair fully reclined for nurses to access the patient.



Phelps says one of the most important design elements in Cove is additional seating for caregivers who often come along to treatment sessions with patients. “These individuals are there often just as long as the patients are,” Phelps says, noting that some are given only folding chairs during their wait. “That really led us to exploring options of how do we integrate those support persons into the experience more. Not only just making them more comfortable, but making it so that they can engage with their loved one who’s going through this traumatic experience.”



Phelps says the concept was more of a learning exercise for Tactile than a product pitch. “We’re hoping to spark ideas in the market at large,” says Phelps. For chemo patients, and their caregivers, new ideas for improving an unpleasant process are probably more than welcome.