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Industry

Industry involvement

Engineering Innovation in Health (EIH) develops technical solutions to pressing challenges in health. We welcome projects from your company that will benefit from a collaborative working team of industry professionals, UW students, and faculty.

Benefits

By participating in EIH, you have the opportunity to:
  • Develop innovative technical solutions that bring value to your company.
  • Vet a solution to a challenging problem, perhaps one that you don’t have the resources to pursue in-house.
  • Generate a deeper understanding of a health challenge, market, current solutions, intellectual property, and regulatory strategy that engages a comprehensive set of stakeholders.
  • Work closely with a diverse group of UW students and faculty from engineering, health sciences, and business.
  • Strengthen your relationship with the UW for recruiting student talent and for engaging in future projects.
  • Leverage world class infrastructure and facilities at UW.
  • Receive a nonexclusive commercial license to any project intellectual property developed by the student team or UW employees.

Involvement

The Engineering Innovation in Health program runs for 9 months. Projects typically start in the fall (October) and run for three quarters (ending in June).

Participating companies pay a sponsorship fee and designate an employee lead to mentor the team. The mentor meets with the team weekly to help them understand the problem in depth and guide the solution pathway.

Intellectual property is governed by existing federal and state laws and is subject to best practices of the University of Washington technology transfer office, CoMotion. A company wholly owns its existing intellectual property. A nonexclusive, commercial license will be granted to any project intellectual property developed by the student team or UW employees. Additional, pre-negotiated options for exclusive licenses have been standardized as part of the Washington Innovation Advantage Program.

The EIH process starts with industry sponsors or clinicians submitting a project idea that focuses on an unmet health challenge and ultimately ends with a working prototype solution, which can take the form of a device, process, or application. Project submissions are due on a rolling basis between May and August each year. We welcome you to reach out to us and discuss your ideas. Please contact Soyoung Kang to learn more.


Submit a health challenge

Sample projects

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

H2Neo »

Neonatal mortality is a significant burden in resource-limited settings, specifically sub-Saharan Africa. At a tertiary referral hospital in Malawi, 24% of all neonates admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit die. At more rural hospitals in the region, this rate is even higher. Neonates weighing less than 1000g at birth had the highest mortality rate at 88% and those that died commonly lost up to 40% of their birthweight due to severe dehydration from a lack of intravenous fluids. Intravenous fluid pumps are used to provide fluids to these neonates, but current solutions either have prohibitive costs or are inappropriate for use in neonates. A solution to prevent dehydration of neonates in resource-limited settings could substantially improve neonatal mortality in the regions with the greatest burden.

Improved Percutaneous Gastrostomy Tube »

Gastrostomy tubes (g-tubes) enable patients to receive adequate nutrition who otherwise could not. G-tubes that are placed through the skin percutaneously have a tendency to dislodge, necessitating an unanticipated and expensive clinical procedure. This new g-tube design can be placed percutaneously and has improved retention. The resulting g-tube design features a bell that crushes for easy insertion and then inverts to provide superior retention.

Diagram of an improved gastronomy tube

IMPULSE »

In current practice, there is no distinct and reliable way to accurately detect the lack of a pulse in a patient. There are many solutions that measure tangential metrics to the pulse, but each has its own downfalls that can lead to negative patient outcomes. Our team desires to find a way to address care teams' lack of critical hemodynamic information during in-hospital SCA while making decisions in high-stress/pressure environments that could mean life or death for patients. In order to achieve this, we decided to reconfigure an ultrasound vascular doppler pen with an audio output into a continuously monitoring doppler cuff with a visual waveform output. This will allow clinicians to have a much more accurate understanding of the heart's mechanical status. 

IMPULSE