MEDevice: A Journey in Medical Device Innovation

by Vincent Khau

Recently Research Platforms Services, with sponsorship from Autodesk, ran a hackathon for medical device innovation at the University of Melbourne. Postgraduate students from the Engineering faculty, and the Medicine, Dentistry, and Health Sciences (MDHS) came together in this cross-disciplinary collaboration to create and develop a medical device product over the course of 4 weeks. It aimed to encourage exciting conversations between faculties that normally do not interact with one another, to create and inspire new ideas. And we did exactly that!

In the first week over on the top floor of the Melbourne Brain Centre, we had the pleasure and honour of hearing from keynote speakers Mr Jason Chuen, Dr Andre Tan, and Ms Michelle Mannering present on a variety of topics ranging from successes and failures of medical devices, to medical device start-ups, and innovation with the Australian climate. These presentations helped contextualise the importance of collaboration between disciplines, as well as highlighting key considerations in product development and pointing out common pitfalls that many medical device products run into. They also provided a great source of entertainment and motivation for the attendees!

Following the presentations, we needed to do some quick speed-dating to get acquainted and form teams for the next few weeks. In total we had 5 teams with each team having at least one clinical student, and one engineering student. The diversity in knowledge was instrumental in identifying problems to solve in the current medical space, in addition to having the skill-set required in how to devise solutions to these problems. We fostered an excellent conversation, with participants staying well past the proposed finish time to keep discussing their ideas.

In the second week of MEDevice everyone got more technical with their ideas and concepts, befitting of the Engineering Workshop environment. We had an introductory Computer Aided Design (CAD) session by our Research Community Coordinator Emilie Walsh, followed by a crash course in rapid prototyping using additive manufacturing - a group even got creative and used 3D scanning technology to scan a foot! These are key approaches in almost any hackathon to figure out if your idea works, and if not, to fail fast and pivot onto the next iteration. Equipped with these skills, the teams worked on their product ideas and delivered a quick pitch at the end of the session, receiving feedback from each other along the way.

With the product development phase well on its way, the third week delved into the questions of ’How does one structure a pitch? How do I pitch perfect?’. To answer these, we invited Professor Michael Vitale from the Wade Institute to teach us the basics of pitching. Over the course of an hour, the teams learned different pitch formats and had the opportunity to practise their newly acquired skills in preparation for the fourth and final week - Pitch Night!

On Pitch Night, we were joined by the judges who had the not so envious task of picking a winning team - Dr. Kerry Hegarty, Prof. Geoff McColl, Prof. David Grayden, Prof. Peter Lee, and Dr. Eka Moseshvilli. Held in the Ian Potter Auditorium at the Melbourne Brain Centre, the teams presented the cumulation of their hard work; a brilliant range of solutions tackling medical issues from auto-cannulation devices, improved colostomy bags, preventative foot ulcer measures, to back-posture correcting wearables, and negative pressure wound therapy! Although I felt each team were equally deserving of a prize, there could only be one winner and the congratulations go to AirStitch for their technique to treat small wounds with negative pressure. Placing second and third were DeltaCore and Soleguard respectively. Check out the photos taken during the event here.

I would like to thank all the participants for dedicating their time to their MEDevice - the high calibre of ideas discussed were certainly inspiring and I hope you all enjoyed the experience and developed lasting connections. Thank you to Autodesk for generously sponsoring the prizes, we absolutely look forward to future collaborations. Thanks also go out to John Xue, for sharing his thoughts and experience of MEDevice.

If you’re interested in getting involved with our future hackathons, keep an eye on this blog and our Twitter - we’ll be sure to announce it here first! In the meanwhile, we’ll be organising ResBaz 2017 - check it out, hope to see you there! Any questions or comments, feel free to get in touch with me at vincent.khau@unimelb.edu.au!

First ResBaz RPRWG grants are a resounding success!

by Paul Mignone

Last year, the Research Bazaar’s Research Product Realisation Working Group (#RPRWG) invited University of Melbourne researchers to apply for the 3D printing mini research grants. A total of 8 grants of AUD 5,000 each were awarded to support impact factor-based research (e.g., publications, exhibitions etc.) in the use of 3D printing alongside its applications across various research disciplines.

As 2015 comes to a close, it is with great pleasure to announce that the majority of RPRWG grants have successfully concluded, producing high-quality research outcomes that can be accessed via figshare digital object identifiers (DOI). A big shout-out and congratulations to our first RPRWG grant recipients!

1)       Christopher Bolton - #PrintedOptics

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1613539

2)      Varsha Pilbrow - #greatapedentalscoringsystem

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4225/49/565BD0B122FC4

3)      Darcy Zelenko and Ravi Bessabava - #optiskel

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4225/49/565BE1B42CB89

4)      Kerry Leonard - #totouchbeauty

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4225/49/5654E2D94C260

5)      Lachlan Whitehead - #PARASIGHT

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.2009034.v1

6)      Amanda Ng - #3DMRIPhantom

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4225/49/5653BB1E9FAF2

Integrated clinical care with Mediaflux/CAReHR

How these systems are crafting better health & health services for refugees & immigrants. 

Prof Beverley-Ann Biggs and collaborators in the University of Melbourne Department of Medicine and the Royal Melbourne Hospital identified the need for a multi-site, web-based clinical information management system for patients from a refugee-like background, who often have multiple and complex health problems compounded by poor language and literacy skills. 

Arcitecta collaborated with the the University to develop the initial version, which then attracted Government funding for development of the Refugee Health Clinical Hub to assist clinicians with improving the health outcomes of recently arrived immigrants and refugees in Victoria. Important elements of this system are Arcitecta’s Mediaflux data operating system and their Clinical Audit Research electronic Health Record (CAReHR).  

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Screenshot of the Immigrant Health Hub website

This system offers an integrated model of care by providing point-of-care decision support for clinicians, creating a database of de-identified population data to allow evaluation of service delivery, and to implement and monitor evidence based health care. It also facilitates linkages with cdmNet for easy sharing of documentation with the patient’s General Practitioner. This system is now in regular clinical use in Immigrant Health Clinics at The Royal Melbourne Hospital, The Royal Children’s Hospital, and Barwon Health. 

Following its use in immigrant health, CAReHR is now being deployed in The Royal Melbourne Hospital Victorian Infectious Disease Service Outpatient clinics to improve the clinical management of  patients with infectious diseases, including TB and HIV/AIDS, and in the Pathway to Good Health Project to improve the wellbeing of children and young people in out-of-home care. 

CAReHR provides:
- an electronic health record that can easily be configured by clinicians according to patient group and emerging clinical issues;
- computerised clinical notes, patient care summaries and pathology requests and,
- one-click creation of patient care summaries (for GPs) and patient medical records (for records management).

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CAReHR services both clinical and research needs within the one system, removing the need to build separate systems. E.g. the moment a clinician creates a new disease template it will be available (in de-identified form) for authorised researchers to use. A major aim of implementing the system in the Royal Melbourne Hospital Refugee Health Clinic was to permit best practice evaluation and clinical research, with the ultimate goal of better health and health services for recently arrived refugees and immigrants. This aim is being achieved and extended to other health contexts.

Additional reading about this work can be found in these articles:

http://www.ipaaleadershipawards.org.au/awards/service-delivery-award/melbourne-health/

http://www.pulseitmagazine.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1634:collaboration-through-technology-for-people-of-refugee-background&catid=16:australian-ehealth&Itemid=328

http://www.arcitecta.com/Products/ForeHealth   

Meet Louise - 3D Modelling Medical Scans!

Hello all,

My name is Louise and I am the newest member of the Research Bazaar team, having just started as a Research Community Coordinator with the team at Research Platform.

After completing a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Engineering (Materials) at Monash University in 2008, I went on to do a PhD in collaboration with Monash University, CSIRO, and Smith & Nephew. During my PhD I developed novel multi-component composite fibres with thermochromic behaviour. In other words, they changed colour with temperature changes (think mood rings in fibre form). Tuned to work in the physiological temperature range, these fibres were created as a potential method for thermal mapping of wounds beds, via their incorporation into bandages.

Later down the track, I was involved in a Researcher in Business program within CSIRO, helping Australian medical devices company Anatomics develop their porous polyethylene surgical implant material PoreStar. Outside of academia I have pursued my own developing interest in 3D printing by purchasing a Makerbot Replicator 2X, combining my knowledge and interest in polymer processing with my passion for DIYing and craft. With this new and exciting piece of hardware I taught myself some rudimentary 3D modelling skills and combined 3D printing with silicone moulding, epoxy resin casting, and general crafty inspiration to come up with some cool new products I now sell online and at markets under the brand name Wordosaurus Text.

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a. my Makerbot replicator 2X, b. a treble clef 3D model in MakerWare c. a silicone mould of the 3D printed master shapes d. A final epoxy resin cast.

I have joined the ResBaz team at Research Platforms to develop awareness and run training sessions relating to medical image processing, in particular the generation of 3D models from medical scan data in the DICOM file format. DICOM image files are produced by a range of medical imaging equipment, (MRI, CT, PET, XRay etc), and consist of a series or stack of cross-sectional image slices across a region of interest in the body. By combining these slices a 3 dimensional representation of the body can be generated.

Generating 3D models of anatomical features from DICOM image files can be beneficial in multiple scenarios. Physical 3D prints of anatomical features such as bones may be used for teaching or training purposes, for the planning of a complex surgery to reduce overall theatre time and risk, and for the creation of implants custom designed and fit to a particular patient. The “3D Printing for Medical Applications” seminar (#3DMed), held on the 14th of April this year, highlighted many applications in which this functionality has been harnessed, and how it could be harnessed in the future.

The software around which the training will be designed is 3D Slicer, an open source community platform with a wide range of capabilities. It’s modular nature provides flexibility and the ability to add on new functionalities as required.  It’s interactive visualisation capabilities includes the ability to display arbitrarily oriented image slices; segment, label features and generate colourmaps, and render 3D models of desired anatomical structures.

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Screenshot taken within 3D Slicer from inbuilt example dataset ‘CTChest’

As this training course is in the very early stages of development, there is ample opportunity for community input and feedback in regards to the content of the material covered. This course is intended to provide researchers and medical staff with valuable and relevant image processing and 3D modelling skills. If you feel you would benefit from this course, or if you know somebody who might, please feel free to contact me to discuss your requirements, at louisevanderwerff@gmail.com, or tweet me at @LouWerff.

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