Texas BME students have used a new Imaging Clinical Immersion course to connect with clinical mentors, boost experience in medical device design, and find an engineering solution to a medical need in maternal fetal medicine.
Orhun Davarci, an integrated biomedical engineering master’s student, and Aleah Eskin and Naazneen Ibtehaj, two undergraduate students, participated in Texas BME’s pilot Imaging Clinical Immersion course, taught by Professors Mia Markey and Grady Rylander, last semester. The student team is now developing and pitching an innovative medical device idea that has received support from Texas Health Catalyst, an initiative between Dell Medical School and UT Austin that fosters innovation in health care.
Left to right: Naazneen Ibtehaj, Orhun Davarci, Aleah Eskin, and Dr. Celeste Shepphard.
This particular team spent spring of 2021 paired with Dr. Celeste Sheppard who works in maternal fetal medicine at Dell Medical School. They observed clinical needs and assessed various problems, with the aim to solve one specific issue. The issue that seemed most impactful to this student team, who informally refer to themselves as the “Phetal Phantoms,” was to tackle training for ultrasound-guided needle procedures such as amniocentesis.
Currently, physicians frequently use non-invasive cell-free DNA testing, a blood test, in order to gain genetic information about a developing fetus. However there are instances where ultrasound-guided needle procedures are necessary. If a DNA test is positive for a disorder, clinicians will want to confirm that information through amniocentesis, cordocentesis, or chorionic villus sampling. These are procedures where clinicians get samples of amniotic fluid from the uterus or tissue around the placenta or umbilical cord.
These needle procedures are less frequent than DNA testing, therefore training opportunities are less available to physicians in training.
“Currently the standard course of training is see one, do one, teach one. Health care workers observe, then practice on a patient and then eventually teach them,” says Aleah Eskin. “But training is important for these needle procedures because there is some risk involved in having them performed.”
To solve this issue, the student team is proposing a simulator that physicians could use for training purposes. Their proposed simulator would be modifiable to provide clinical variation, would be able to be used for all three needle procedures, and would mimic different anatomies. Using this type of simulator, physicians could gain experience to benefit a large variety of patients.
While working on a solution, the team interviewed fellows and physicians to discover what improvements can be made on current simulators, which are often over-engineered and too expensive or under-engineered and not effective.
Seeing promise in this simulator device proposal, Texas Health Catalyst awarded the team with a Phase 1 Consulting Award, which has allowed the team to connect with and work with an industry advisor, Douglas Stoakley, co-founder and president of ClearCam, a medical equipment manufacturer in Austin (co-founded by Texas Engineering’s Dr. Chris Rylander).
They have also applied for funding, to entrepreneurship bootcamps, and pitch competitions, making it to the semi-finals in the DisruptTexas Pitch Competition.
The students credit this newest design course for the mentorship opportunities they’ve received and access to resources.
“This was probably my favorite class at UT Austin,” says Naazneen Ibtehaj, a senior biomedical engineering student.
“I don’t think we could have made this connection with Dr. Sheppard or any physicians without this Imaging Clinical Immersion course,” says Eskin, also a senior.
The students’ next steps, after determining market viability with help from Texas Health Catalyst mentors, are to explore creating a device they hope to commercialize and that could be used for training in other specialties that require ultrasound-guided needle procedures such as urology and breast oncology. Once they are ready, the team will use lab space through Texas Inventionworks in the EER to build a prototype.
