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Clinician involvement

Engineering Innovation in Health (EIH) promotes interdisciplinary collaborations between engineers and a wide range of clinicians with the goal of developing technical solutions to pressing challenges in health care.

We invite any health care professional to submit an unmet health challenge. Previous EIH projects have involved more than 100 clinicians, with diverse training and specialties, including medical doctors, surgeons, nurses, physical therapists, dentists, pharmacists, and pathologists.

Involvement

Submitting your unmet need

The EIH process starts with submitting an unmet health challenge and ultimately ends with a working prototype solution, which can take the form of a device, process, or application.

It takes only a few minutes to submit your initial unmet challenge via the Clinical Project Application. The applications asks you to describe the unmet health challenge, how the challenge is currently addressed, and your vision for how the project might move forward.

Selection process

In late summer (August/September), EIH invites a select group of submissions to give a reverse pitch, describing their unmet needs to our selection committee. The projects that the committee selects move forward in the first phase (October-December) that focuses on deep and holistic understanding of the unmet health challenge.

We often receive more than 50 submissions each year. Typically 10 to 15 projects are invited to participate in the autumn quarter class, and 6 to 8 projects move forward during winter and spring quarters for full development.

Time commitment

The submitting clinician (or team of clinicians) will form a team with engineering students and faculty. Autumn quarter requires roughly 1 to 3 hours per week of clinician time plus attendance at the Fall Showcase in December. If your project is selected for full development during winter and spring quarters (January–June) the time commitment will increase marginally.

There are no direct costs to the participating clinicians; however, we always welcome direct support to the program from individuals, departments, and industry.

 

Submit a health challenge

 

Benefits

Prototype solution and intellectual property

If your project is selected for full development, you will receive the solution to your health challenge in the form of a working prototype (device, process, app) in June. You and your team will submit the invention to CoMotion for further consideration for a U.S. patent application. A large percentage of EIH projects have pursued patent applications.

Preliminary data and comprehensive report

You will receive a comprehensive report that covers the background of the unmet need, the existing approaches and technologies that address the challenge, the regulatory pathway, preliminary market opportunity, and background intellectual property, as well as several solution designs and their preliminary data.

Future opportunities

The solution and report provides an abundance of opportunities to move the project forward:

  • Submit a patent for the innovation.
  • Use the report information and preliminary data gathered for subsequent publications and grant applications.
  • Evaluate the innovative solution in the clinic (with appropriate IRB and FDA considerations).
  • Begin the process of spinning out a start-up company.

Sample projects

For a full list of previous projects, visit the Projects section.

Intravenous Arm Trainer »

Over 200,000 IV catheters are placed daily in the United States; however, there is a 50% fail rate for correctly placing the catheter on the first needlestick. Healthcare students need to be able to train to place IVs, but existing arm trainers lack anatomical and physiological accuracy. As a consequence, students resort to practicing on other students or on patients, which poses an infection risk. This new arm trainer has a unique four-layer tissue and rolling vein behavior that provide the most realistic training experience possible for students.

IV arm trainer device

DopCuff: Blood Pressure Monitor for LVAD Patients »

Patients with terminal heart disease may be implanted with a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), which allows hospital discharge with an acceptable quality of life while awaiting a donor heart to become available or for destination therapy. Prevailing technology for LVAD uses continuous flow centrifugal pumps to provide circulatory support. Careful monitoring of blood pressure in LVAD patients is essential to reduce complications associated with LVADs. However, the non-pulsatile blood flow dynamics of these LVADs confounds accurate blood pressure measurement and cannot be performed using commercially available non-invasive blood pressure sphygmomanometers alone. DopCuff integrates doppler and automated cuff technology into a single blood pressure measuring device that is user-friendly and accurate for outpatient use in LVAD patients to satisfy a significant unmet clinical need for this growing population of patients and their caretakers. 

Continuous Monitoring of Fetal Well-being »

Resource-limited countries have a stillbirth rate that is approximately 10 times greater than that of developed countries. One in four of these stillbirths, along with newborn deaths in resource-limited countries, can be attributed to oxygen deprivation during labor and delivery. The continuous monitoring of fetal heart rate and maternal uterine contractions is essential for diagnosing such fetal distress early on. To satisfy the unique needs of hospitals in resource-limited settings, this low-cost, consumables-free solution of continuous monitoring of fetal well-being utilizes an electrocardiogram to detect fetal and maternal heart rates, as well as an electromyogram to measure the uterine muscle contractions.