This past month has been the maiden voyage of many things: graduate school at Rice University, living in Texas, and my implementation project. I’m still not used to the beauty of campus at Rice- I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of walking down the arched stone hallways or amongst the giant mossy trees. But one thing that really defines a GMI student’s experience at Rice is their implementation project. I’m excited to share with you the details behind my implementation project and my reasons for choosing it!

My implementation project involves designing an app to help safely transfer photos and data of suspicious skin lesions to doctors at Hospital de Câncer de Barretos, in Barretos, Brazil. The project has been active for the last two years (a Rice senior design team and previous GMI student contributed), and I’m expected to put the finishing touches on the project. The project is fueled by the necessity to safely and accurately diagnose people with skin cancer who can’t easily travel to the Barretos Cancer Hospital. My app (combined with Josh’s mechanical phone device) would be implemented in satellite locations around Brazil, where nurses can bridge the gap of diagnosis by taking consistently accurate pictures of skin lesions and sending the photos via the app to the dermatologists at the cancer hospital.

There are two reasons behind why I picked this project for my year-long implementation. Reason one: I wanted a challenge. My computer skills are lacking due to a bad mental attitude toward technology. This attitude originated from poor professor/classroom experiences. With technology playing a rapidly growing role in the medical device world, I knew I had to break this mental barrier.

Reason two: I wanted to experience the later-end of medical devices. I’ve experienced roles on the front end (R&D engineers) and in the middle (Quality/ Process Development engineers), but I had yet to experience the end roles such as Clinical/Field engineers, sales, and marketing. With this project in its later stages, a large part of the project will involve the interaction with and training of large numbers of nurses and clinicians on my product.

Because of these reasons, I felt like this project would be the perfect fit for me. I’m looking forward to mastering the platform of this app, called REDCap. Once that learning curve is complete, I plan to make some edits to address feedback collected by a trial run from last spring. I’m looking forward to making some good progress before I make the trip down to Brazil in October!