2019-2020 BMES - Medtronic Student Design Competition Winners

This year has introduced many new complications due to COVID-19, including how best to host the design competition in a virtual setting. BMES has concluded that in order to best adjust to a virtual presentation format, 10 finalists will be selected from the group of submitted projects. 

2020's TOPIC OF FOCUS WAS MEDICAL DEVICES
Of the ten finalists who competed at the 2020 BMES Virtual Annual Meeting;

• Smart and Connected Stent
• MITS Patch
• NeuroTrak
• UltraVision
• Cardiovascular Conquerors
• ViveSense
• NERV Proposal
• TMAP 
• Pediatric Myoelectric Upper-Limb Prostheses
• Single Dual Lumen

Three were selected as winners; 
  First place went to the team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The MITS Patch.
 Despite the recent advances in minimally invasive technologies, methods to join and repair tissues remain largely based on traditional mechanical fasteners such as sutures and staples. However, the complex manipulation required for suturing is difficult to perform minimally invasively, and both sutures and staples can cause tissue damage and may lead to anastomotic leaks and other postoperative complications. In this project, we introduce a new strategy for achieving minimally invasive tissue adhesion based on a multifunctional tissue sealing patch. The patch is realized by a synergistic combination of three functional layers: (i) a micro-textured bioadhesive layer which achieves fast and robust adhesion to wet tissues based on a dry-crosslinking adhesion mechanism; (ii) a hydrophobic fluid overlayer for protection against contamination from premature tissue contact of body fluids; and (iii) a zwitterionicinterpenetrated antifouling layer to mitigate biofouling and postoperative adhesions. By adopting origami and kirigami-based fabrication strategies, we demonstrate that the patch can be readily integrated with different tyes of minimally invasive end effectors to provide facile and effective tissue sealing in ex vivo porcine models, offering new opportunities for less invasive and more efficient tissue repair in diverse clinical scenarios.  Second place went to the team from the University of California, Irvine, UltraVision.
According to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, sports account for about 20% of all traumatic brain injuries, totaling over 500,000 emergency room cases per year. Athletes, primarily those in contact sports, repeatedly experience head trauma, leading to a higher risk of dementia later in life. Current sports concussion protocols are limited, relying on a few qualitative measures before sending athletes back onto the field. To address this problem, we created UltraVision, a non-invasive intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring device that allows medical staff to rapidly assess brain health. Increased ICP is directly linked to brain trauma severity, but current measurement methods are invasive, expensive, and time-consuming. UltraVision is an inexpensive, portable, and reusable device that uses ocular ultrasonography to noninvasively indicated elevated ICP. UltraVision is a Class II device that meets the conditions for 510(k) exemption.