After a restful break, everything has kicked right into gear. Since the last blog post, I’ve actually got to visit California again, this time visiting my old college roommate in San Francisco. Upon returning for the spring semester, teams have been set and projects have moved forward.
Lots of progress has been made for my global project, Laparodome. Our team has iterated through multiple designs of our cardboard laparoscopic training device. Who knew there are some many different types of cardboard? ULINE with the 24 hour delivery time has come in clutch. With lots of gRaPhIc DeSiGn in Adobe Illustrator and many hours with the laser cutter in the OEDK, we have tested several of our designs. We’ve also talked with multiple residents and physicians from Baylor College of Medicine to gain feedback on our design. From those meetings, we got valuable insight into effective training methods and more connections to other physicians working on laparoscopic training in a global setting. We are also developing an app for iOS and Android to provide instructions for each task, record and save videos of practicing the tasks and a self-evaluation checklist for instant feedback.
Our abstract was accepted for the Emerging Technology Session at the SAGES 2020 Annual Meeting in Cleveland and the Houston Global Health Collaborative conference. Erik and I plan on attending the SAGES conference in April and are excited to meet with more potential stakeholders.
For my local Houston project, lots of exciting things have happened since winter break. We rebranded to Guide-Ox and participated in the RBPC Qualifier Business Competition and will compete at the Napier Rice Launch Challenge in March. We have begun ordering components for our own PCB design and preliminary testing for our design. With more meetings with physicians at MD Anderson and Houston Methodist, we have learned a lot about how perfusion is measured during procedures and insight to help us design the best solution.
We rebranded to Guide-Ox and participated in the RBPC Qualifier Business Competition and will compete at the Napier Rice Launch Challenge in March.
Outside Rice, I also got to explore more of Texas. A couple of us went to Galveston for a weekend and went to Mardi Gras. Apparently, Mardi Gras in Galveston is the third largest Mardi Gras celebration in the US!
I’m excited to see what the rest of the semester has to hold. We potentially have the opportunity to implement our global project in Costa Rica and could work with engineers from CDI on our local project. The Napier Rice Launch Challenge and the SAGES conference will be both unique opportunities to see where these projects can go. The job search is still ongoing and we’ll see where I end up.