Halo and more

Lately much of my time has been consumed, rather, well-spent, working on the Low Profile Halo System. It started as an idea in the minds of two neurosurgeons at Barnes-Jewish, was brought to our biomedical engineering senior design course last December, and now continues as we attempt to make something "real" out of the project. ...continued

Three BME students worked with a mechanical engineering faculty and two neurosurgeons to redesign the archaic, cumbersome, mediocre cervical spine orthosis known as a halo. For our senior design class we went through the "typical" design process on paper, just like all the other groups. Additionally, our project and one other were part of a pilot program to develop marketable products out of such classes, so we worked with a graduate law student on intellectual property issues, with a pair of MBA students on the market potential aspect, and with a team of visual communications students on design of our poster presentation.

Over the summer we conducted some experiments on existing devices to characterize its stability under various loading regimes. These experiments will continue and it is likely that two of us will write our Masters Theses on this topic. We suspect that the current device is not nearly as stable as it should be and that our design will provide less "wiggle room" and better allow patients to heal.

Over the past weeks we have been building. As of now we have two versions of a mockup for the final design, with plans for a third to be build sometime next week. We've been using our mockups to "try on" the device and get a hands-on experience of what works and what doesn't with respect to adjustability, fixation points, proper fit, and comfort. It is absolutely wonderful finally seeing, holding, touching, and moving something that we've been staring at on paper for months. And our group has been spending so many hours together that we are building strong relationships, even moreso than those forged during last semester.

Beyond what we're doing for the engineering, I am delving further into the depths of the project, using the halo as my model for my entrepreneurship class. So I get to look into marketing and promotion by my own accord, using the collaborative work from last semester as a springboard.

Our long-term goals for the project: well, we haven't really articulated this in writing, nothing agreed upon. However, the way I see it, we have several items to accomplish:

1. Publish several papers characterizing forces and motions in the current device and in our device.
2. Secure one or more patents for the technologies we've developed and incorporated into the device.
3. Gain FDA approval for the use of our device.
4. Produce our low-profile halo system, either by manufacture on our own or by license to an established device company, so that patients can use it.

On another somewhat related note, I leave very soon (as in later this evevning) for Philadelphia to attend the Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Conference. It will be my first meeting of the sort ever, and I'm rather excited to be going. If I can get online at all while I'm there I'll post updates from the conference; if not I'll just try to get a summary up when I come home on Sunday.