Engineering innovations offer promise during pandemic

The global spread of COVID-19 has brought health care to the front and center of society’s challenges. While some engineers have pivoted their work to confront coronavirus head on, others are approaching existing health care problems that the global crisis is calling new attention to. “COVID-19 has created many challenges for our health care system and clinicians are coming to us to develop technical solutions to those unmet needs,” says ME and chemical engineering professor Jonathan Posner. Posner, who was recently named ME’s Richard and Victoria Harrington Professor in Engineering Innovation in Health, directs the Engineering Innovation in Health (EIH) program for the UW. Entering its eighth year, EIH has become a rallying point for connecting health care experts with problem-solving engineering students and faculty. The program asks clinicians to propose unmet health-related needs and selects the most promising ones for a team of engineering students to tackle. The program ends with a capstone project requiring the students to build a functional prototype and has already resulted in more than 43 prototype medical devices. Some projects stop there, but many of the best move to commercialization. “The global COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the importance of the relationship between medical practitioners and engineers,” says EIH executive director and ME teaching professor Soyoung Kang. “We’ve been thrust into a situation that’s underscoring to the entire world the need for innovation. It’s extremely motivating to everyone in our program and I believe will lead to some very important advances.” Three projects with their origins in EIH exemplify the potential for engineering inventions that, if successful in prototyping, clinical trials and the marketplace, could improve care and save lives: