This week we participated in the Medical Innovation Bootcamp at UCIMED. We worked in small teams incorporating the lectures we heard into a project where we researched a need, developed a solution, and presented our findings. Looking back on all we packed into 38 hours of work, it was quite impressive to see where we started day one and all we were able to accomplish.
On the first day, we began by covering strategic focus. After being introduced to the idea we set about putting it in action through “the marshmallow challenge”. If you are unfamiliar, the task is to build a structure so that your marshmallow is held at the highest point. There is a time limit and our tools were dry spaghetti and tape. My team had a strong start but like many, we waited till the end to place our marshmallow and thus had some unintended leaning and ultimate failure of our tower. The main takeaway was to be like a kindergartner and not focus so much on the direct end solution but iterating and adjusting to meet the needs of the task with a shorter term perspective. Aka don’t over narrow your focus and have your tower fall at the end because you didn’t test with the marshmallow during construction but also don’t spend all your time planning a great design with no execution.
In the context of the bootcamp, we focused on developing solutions to medical needs and how to develop the appropriate lens to identify a problem and work towards a solution. After lunch, we were divided into 8 teams tackling 4 different issues. My team consisted of Asma and two doctors from Costa Rica (or at least, at the start it did). Our challenge was to address the issue of infant head positioning during pediatric bronchoscopy. We started with our needs statement. What is the problem we are tying to solve, who are the affected population, and what is the desired outcome.
Our team intends to limit the need for constant supervision during pediatric bronchoscopy by maintaining the patient’s position independently thereby reducing complications.
From here, we started researching our problem, trying to better understand the procedure itself and why infants have more specific needs during bronchoscopy that adult patients undergoing the same procedure. The doctors were helpful for this portion as they introduced us to “the sniffing position”. This is where an infant’s head is angled so that the chin and glabella are aligned horizontally. Because babies heads are much larger in the back and they have less neck control and range of motion, their airways tend to compress when they are positioned flat on their back with no upper shoulder/neck support. This is currently resolved during bronchoscopies by positioning them with towels and pillows but because they are often not fully sedated during the procedure, they can move out of this position. This then requires a nurse to either reposition or hold the baby and limits the nurse from helping with other tasks during the procedure. Additionally, there are higher risks of complications when a patient is mispositioned.
Taking what we learned during day one, we applied in the morning of day two towards developing a patient and money flow chart to understand where a patient would interact with our solution in the existing system. We used this to develop a PDT (Prevention, Diagnosis, Treatment) table to evaluate the needs of the patient, payer, and provider. We found the highest areas of need were for something that can reduce complications and thus cost and can easily be adopted into the existing procedure. When we performed our market analysis, we confirmed that there was significant unmet need in this area given the number of procedures performed and the opportunity to expand further into obese and elderly patient groups who have similar airway issues. After lunch, we lost our doctor partners and Asma and I finished the remainder of the project on our own. We spent the rest of the day identifying our design criteria and brainstorming.
Day three, we developed a Pugh matrix to evaluate our potential solutions and decide what to pursue further. In the end, we selected a gel shoulder pad with removable head cushion disks to bring to life through a low fidelity prototype. But before we created our prototype we participated in a very fun challenge to design a “Bajaj” to safely carry two ping pong ball passengers down a zipline as fast as possible with zero expulsions from the bajaj. My group had a successful second attempt down the biplane after our first run crashed into the side wall before making it very far down the run.
After the Bajaj challenge, Asma and I went to battle with foam, cardboard, and tape to bring our prototype and accompanying dummy to life.
On day four, we started by searching for existing IP (intellectual property) that could contend with our device and evaluated the potential risk. We also modeled potential Manufacturing/LBM (Labor, Burden, Materials) costs. Then we cleaned up our presentation and practiced as much as time allowed before we presented all we worked on.
The presentation was fun and it was great getting lots of questions from the various judges, industry professionals, and our fellow bootcamp participants. It was nice to celebrate completing the bootcamp with ice cream and I am looking forward to what the Needs-finding workshop teaches us on Sunday!