D2.2: Student Design Competition

Year 4 (2006-2007):

Coordinator: John Enderle

Process for 2006-2007 Competition:

The contest announcement (below) was distributed to design programs in August 2006, and covered three target areas for the 2006-2007 competition. See also the contest rules for 2006-2007 (pdf file).

The participating universities include:

The design reports for the 2006-2007 competition, as provided by each team through web pages, can be viewed for each of the three categories:

Ten judges from government, industry and academia participated in the competition, with three to four judges evaluating each entry.  Each team received up to $2000 in reimbursement for design costs.  First prize: $1000, Second prize: $750, Third prize: $500. The results of the judging process are as follows:

Overall Winner of the Competition

University of Connecticut’s Accessible Adjustable Back Angle Controller 

Within each area, the following teams received awards in the competition:

Accessible Home Vital Signs Monitoring System

First Place -- Trinity University Project Title: Accessible Home Vital Signs Monitoring System Project Title: Accessible Medication Dispensing Device.  Team Members: Michael Giese, Katherine Avakian, Matt Bardwell, Kevin Wallof.  Faculty Advisor: Dr. Farzan Aminian.  Web Address: http://www.trinity.edu/student_org/thetatau/

Second Place – Columbia University.  Project Title:  Accessible Home Vital Signs Monitoring System.  Team Members: Brett Chung, Ashraf Fawzy, Maggie Jan, Jordan Muraskin.  Faculty Advisors: Drs. Elisa Konofagou & Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic. Web Address: http://www.columbia.edu/~af2123.      

Third Place – Marquette University.  Project Title: B26: Accessible Home Vitals Monitoring System.  Team Members: Steve Bushman, Andrew Okabe, Daniel Lomo-Tetty.  Faculty Advisor: Dr. Jack Winters.  Web Address: www.eng.mu.edu/rehab/b26/.

Accessible Infusion Pump Interface

First Place -- University of Rochester.  Project Title: Inf-U-Tech: Accessible Home Infusion Pump.  Team Members: Mitchele Au, Brian Duffy, Justin Goldstein, Joseph Lust.  Faculty Advisor: Dr. Scott Seidma. Web Address: http://mail.rochester.edu/~mau/RERC/Index.html.

Second Place – Binghamton University.  Project Title: Infusion Pump Interface.  Team Members: Ruslan Boyko, Mario Fantini, Alex Huang, Jianzhuang Huang, Libo Zhu.  Faculty Advisor: Dr. Vladimir Nikulin. Web Address: http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~jhuang5.

Third Place – University of Connecticut.  Project Title: Accessible Infusion Pump User-Interface.  Team Members:  Hassam Sultan, Kevin Golebieski, Michael Cahill.  Faculty Advisor: Dr. John Enderle.  Web Address:  http://www.bme.uconn.edu/sendes/Spring07/Team2/index.htm

Accessible Power-Assist Hospital Bed Back Angle Controller

First Place -- University of Connecticut.  Project Title: Adjustable Back Angle Controller.  Team Members: Alaena DeStefano, Steven Frisk, Raymond Pennoyer.  Faculty Advisor: Dr. John Enderle.  Web Address: http://www.bme.uconn.edu/sendes/Spring07/Team8/index.htm. 

Second Place – Milwaukee School of Engineering.  Project Title: Hospital Bed Controller (Standing Assist and Back-raise Device).  Team Members: Ron Covert, Scott Gillis, Brian Remick, Andrew Barry.  Faculty Advisor: Dr. Subha K. Kumpaty.  Web Address: http://myweb.msoe.edu/~kumpaty/RERConAMI/indexX.html.

Third Place – University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Project Title: Accessible Power-Assist Hospital Bed Back Angle Controller.  Team Members:  Brenton Nelson, Ibrahim Khansa, Katy Reed, Shikha.  Faculty Advisor: Dr. Willis J. Tompkins Web Address:  http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~bcnelson/.

2006-2007 National Student Design Competition
Open to programs in biomedical engineering, industrial design, and related fields

Programs receive up to $2000 in reimbursement for design costs;
First prize: $1000, Second prize: $750, Third prize: $500;
Additional $500 award for registration/travel to present a related paper accepted at a major conference

Contact: John Enderle, Ph.D., e-mail: jenderle@bme.uconn.edu, phone: 860-486-5521

Design teams are welcome to enter in any of 3 target design areas described below,
and designs must satisfy the needs of the hypothetical “clients” on the following page:

Accessible Home Vital Signs Monitoring System

Problem: As healthcare costs escalate, tasks that used to be performed only within medical facilities are increasingly moving into the home. Technological advances have made remote patient monitoring not only possible but also an effective alternative, especially because it minimizes the need for travel by the patient or care provider.
Aim: Design an affordable, easy-to-use, and integrated system that a patient (or his/her personal assistant) can use within the home to collect and transmit vital signs to a remote healthcare provider or facility.
Specs: The system must collect data on at least 4 of the following 6 vital signs: patient’s body temperature, weight, blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, and blood oxygen (SpO2) level, and store these data in a way easily retrievable. The device should be as easy as possible for a non-professional (whether patient or lay caregiver) to operate, accessible as possible, and appropriate for home use. Teams may use existing devices but must integrate them into a cohesive system, and should simulate an appropriate computer interface. Web-based and multimodal approaches are encouraged.

Accessible Infusion Pump Interface

Problem: Infusion pumps are used to deliver necessary materials (fluids, medications or nutrients) to the body, within its fluids (usually blood). The most crucial concern regarding infusion pumps is accurate delivery of dosing rates and volumes because over- or under-dosing could result in detrimental effects for the patient. Areas of concern in regard to infusion error include: miscalculation of desired dosage levels, data entry error (such as misplacement of a decimal point), and titration error (related to volume or rate of fluid flow).
Aim: Design a portable, reliable, low-cost interface that is easy to use, and that works with or is built on an existing commercially available infusion pump (which may be purchased or otherwise acquired).
Specs: The infusion pump interface must communicate effectively with users (patients or care providers) through both a visual display and audio output, plus tactile cues with any user controls. Consider ease of learning and operation, aesthetics, patient privacy, information and documentation access, and storage/ loading of components. Note that any alarms must be accessible to all users.

Accessible Power-Assist Hospital Bed Back Angle Controller

Problem: Powered hospital beds often use open-loop controls to set the back angle, which typically moves at a constant slow velocity while an operator presses a momentary contact switch. The concept of extended physiologic proprioception (EPP) suggests that users might benefit from a more intuitive approach of manually grasping a handle on the side of the upper portion and using force-assist concepts to set the back angle (maybe with the assistance of anti-gravity mechanisms), in which motion speed increases with the amount of force applied to the handle.
Aim:  Design a reliable, easy-to-use, EPP-based power-assist back angle controller for a prototype platform (or hospital bed or exam table).
Specs: The operating handle should be mounted on side edge of the bed frame, and easy for a caregiver to reach and grasp.  The weight of the back of a patient on the bed will range up to 180 lbs (45% of a 400-lb patient). Operator force will vary normally, in the range from 1 to 20 lbs, but with a caregiver capable of only 5 lbs able to fully operate it (but then at lower speeds). The bed must be stable during and after adjustment, and safe if power is lost.

Client list for design challenges:

Mat –At 52 years old, Mat is proud of his of 6’-2” height and good physical condition. He is blind and works as a radio commentator. Mat recently experienced a small stroke and his physician wants to monitor his vital signs remotely for the next 90 days. He has been married to Akiko for 16 years, and even though he actively dislikes high technology, he helps her with her infusion therapy.

Akiko – Akiko, 47, has low vision caused by CMV retinitis and receives treatment in the form of foscaret infusions administered at home, generally with the help of her husband, Mat. She works as a medical transcriptionist, loves the Internet and email (especially for staying in touch with her family in Japan), and spends time on the computer most days.

Jorge – Jorge has worked as a home health nurse for the last 30 years, half of his 60-year life. Although he has been careful, he has chronic back pain caused primarily by patient handling over the years and wishes it were easier to help his clients sit up in bed. He has also become somewhat hard of hearing but refuses to wear a hearing aid (yet). In his spare time, Jorge is an avid video game player and partly because of it, he has mild carpal tunnel syndrome that sometimes affects his high scores.

Lakisha – Lakisha is 69 years old and retired. She has Parkinson’s disease, which limits her mobility and dexterity and causes her to have tremors. She sleeps in a hospital bed. Lakisha is receiving experimental infusion therapy at home, which is more convenient for her but she still dislikes it.  Her home health nurse, Jorge, has helped make the experience much more tolerable, and he is also introducing her to computers.

Sani – Sani is a 31-year-old lawyer who received a head injury in a recent automobile accident. It left her partially paralyzed on her right side, which is especially inconvenient because she is right-handed. She is working limited hours from home, where she has a hospital bed and administers pain medication to herself through an infusion pump. Her HMO monitors her vital signs via a computer system installed in her home. Sani is very concerned about the appearance of all this equipment in her home. She does not want to look “sick” to her friends and family members who come to visit.

Dolores – Dolores just celebrated her 86th birthday with her son, his wife and their son, Tyler, with whom she lives. She is deaf and has severe arthritis, and because of her heart problems Dolores receives infusions at home, which are usually administered by one of her family members.

Tyler –Dolores’s grandson Tyler is a bright and busy 11-year-old who has a fascination with electronic gadgets of all kinds. He is small for his age but he loves his grandmother dearly and does everything he can to help her. Because he has hemophelia and receives occasional infusions of a blood clotting agent, Tyler is an experienced infusion pump user and often helps with Dolores’s therapy and helps her sit up in bed. He greatly enjoys helping to collect his grandmother’s vital signs and transmit them over the computer to her doctors.

 

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