The Next Revolution in Medical Devices: Self-Design and Prototyping

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Steven F. Palter, MD

have just returned from the Maker Faire and have seen the future of medical device innovation, invention, and design– Self-design and rapid home prototyping. For those unfamiliar with the jargon basically technology now exists that can allow the creation of a working prototype of a device from idea to an actual working hand-held version in a physician-inventor’s own home. This has the potential to democratize the process and eliminate previous massive cost and technological barriers that kept the process inaccessible except to large industry or those with substantial capital resources.

One person I spoke with was calling this the Next Industrial Revolution. To me this is clearly the inevitable technological evolution of design and device innovation following in the exact path blazed by desktop publishing, digital video and computer based editing for movie creation to name just two examples. –And once again it is fueled by the exponential progress in computer power –here married to a fanatical base of innovators driving the creation of the raw tools that will be the assembly line of the future.

What is Maker Faire? Maker Fair just had its first NY exhibit and is an offshoot of Make magazine. MAKE brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. Think of it as technology-hackers. Its like wood-shop for the 21st century hacker who is building his own radio controlled spy drone or augmented reality device instead of oven mitts and hotplate coasters. AS they write “this is a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will. For example, in our first volume, we show you how to get involved in Kite Aerial Photography, how to make a cheap but effective video camera stabilizer, and how to build a device that reads the hidden information stored on the magnetic stripes on all your credit cards.”

Homelab laser engraver/cutter. can carve any substance with laser power and precision. cuts out 3D models too.

But that’s just the beginning. The sophistication of the home creation kits is mind-blowing.

This is a beagleboard. It contains all the power of an entire computer. It was running what looked like a normal desktop with a video capture and object recognition on a version of linux. It costs less than $500 and can be the basis for home-made computer intelligent devices. All open source as well.

At the Faire take thousands of people with this mindset, demos, kits, and lessons to “celebrate arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset.” And as usual for my tech crossovers— add one doctor to the group.

What’s The Medical Significance? As usual I search out emerging technologies not yet used in medicine that have the potential to right now change how we do things. What’s struck me with all I saw was the common theme that anything that was a high tech machine now today can be imagined, designed, researched, 3D modeled, and turned into working prototype all in a home workshop on an inventor’s budget. What’s more this now applies to the physical aspects (ie plastic casing and movable parts) and to the electronics being them embedded operating systems or any myriad of sensors. The theme of the day was that you yourself can see these projects through to this stage and there is a thriving community and ground-swell of momentum to build a grass roots infrastructure to help.

Examples of 3D Prototyping/Desktop Manufacturing:

The left image is a makerbot — you build this machine and then it produces 3d models out of plastic from 3D images on you computer. You can anything from an action figure to a device handle to well– the middle images was made on a higher end system like that shown on the right. here the machine first modeled the bones then applied a tissue layer over it. The system right now can take any 3D dataset from an ultrasound MRI or CT scan and reconstruct 3D tissue or organ models. I’ll follow up in a later post how scientists are using such technologies to literally build artificial organs in the lab– they build the structure then seed it with living cells that create the organ. The maker bot replaces a $100,000 fabricator from a decade ago and costs under $1500– and its all open source.

Could You Cure a Disease With a Device Invention? Does Your Child Think He or She Could? You’d be Surprised? The New Inventor’s Mindset for the 21st Century. You probably grew up thinking devices of all sorts and especially electronics were otherworldly gizmos of incomprehensible complexity of design. The workings of a TV, video camera, or electronic medical diagnostic device where the stuff that only biomedical engineer with a pocket protector and a degree from MIT could have created. Your kids think otherwise. They are comfortable with technology and with programming computers when presented with understandable languages. They can make a webpage. They can edit video and retouch photos. They have a myspace page. They may tinker with remote control toys. Many of them with some practice can create 3D computer graphics. Just recently A Russian amateur filmmaker called Alexander Semenov produced this 2.5 minute bootleg Transformers short with a couple of sub-$1,000 cameras, two hours’ of footage and a month in the home desktop editing suite that many think rivals the effects of a million dollar Hollywood blockbuster.

Understand that the next generation of design and creation tools will use these same sorts of visual programming language and are just as accessible. I walked through the exhibits with a 6 and 9 year old. By the end of the day the 6 year old had soldered an LED lit circuit board to make an electronic toy (parts cost $1), both had piloted radio controlled robots complete with sensors, and had begun to design autonomous robotic creatures– and they had never done this before. I was recently asked to give a talk to a group of 4th graders working on the Lego First competition. This is a robotics competition for kids to build working devices. There are more than 10,000 teams competing this year. This year’s theme is biomedical research. They kids were instructed that they have the tools to invent a device that could solve a medical problem. They don’t believe only MIT engineers solve problems. They expect to. Remember who invented youtube and facebook.

home kit for sensor based mobile search and rescue bot. The same sophistication as a military robot and the same technology as in implantable body rovers being developed.

robotic arm prototype- could model prosthetics

home made kit for scanning tunneling microscope for research uses. A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a powerful instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. For an STM, good resolution is considered to be 0.1 nm lateral resolution and 0.01 nm depth resolution.With this resolution, individual atoms within materials are routinely imaged and manipulated. This is now a do-it-yourself kits for under $200 all open source design and technology

DARPA’s Battlefield Robot Medic to Deploy in 2009

Posted on August 8, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

This year is the 50th anniversary of DARPA, or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon research arm who turns science fiction fantasy into military reality. DARPA conducts high-risk military research and in the process develops amazing medical technology. To kick things off right at their 3-day DARPA tech conference (or official site here) they announced the upcoming deployment of the remote battlefield medic/surgeon Trauma Pod robotic system by 2009! Surgical robotics was initially conceived by DARPA as remote battlefront or space surgical robots and this technology is now widely available in the DaVinci surgical robots.

As Popular Mechanics reported from the Conference: (skip to the end for links to videos)

the first portable, self-contained surgical robot will be deployed in the next two years. Brett Giroir, director of the research agency’s Defense Sciences Office also announced that the system, called Trauma Pod, has successfully “treated” a mannequin during a test, with no complications.

A single human will operate the robot remotely during surgery, but Trauma Pod will be able to perform a number of functions, such as fluid administration and surgical assistance, autonomously. The goal is to stabilize injured soldiers as quickly as possible, and previous Trauma Pod designs have included related systems that evacuate the patient. Giroir said that a prototype will be delivered to troops within two years.

Details of the System and its Use:

According to DSO Director Brett Giroir, the goal of the Trauma Pod is to conduct “emergency control surgery.” That means diagnosing and treating major trauma, focusing on airway management, head wounds and, as Giroir put it, “controlling uncontrollable bleeding.”

And while a surgeon will be controlling some of the Pod’s functions, such as the more invasive procedures, the system relies heavily on autonomous control. The robots in the Pod would insert breathing tubes and IVs, but the surgeon would direct the scalpel. Even during remote operation, auto-targeting systems will assist the surgeon, completing or fine-turning certain actions. “It’s not doing surgery the way a person is,” Giroir said. Instead of an exercise in advanced telepresence, the Trauma Pod is a synthesis of human judgement and robotic precision. Much of the surgeon’s input will be to tell the robots not to do something, such as inserting a breathing tube. Many of the systems are still up in the air, but Giroir expects the Pod to rely on CT scans for diagnosing trauma, and various surgical instruments that, as depicted in the video, the robots will literally grab out of a rack. It might incorporate technology from other programs, such as a device that triggers coagulation in a severed artery through high-intensity focused ultrasound.

Getting the patient off the battlefield and into a hospital is another matter. While the Pod is supposed to eventually meet certain size and weight restrictions, there are no plans yet to incorporate specific vehicles. Giroir does believe it will be compact enough to fit in the back of a Stryker vehicle, for example, and the experimental model that will be delivered in two years might still need to be trimmed down. The Trauma Pod is expected to be used by the Army initially, with possible, full-production deployment happening between 2011 and 2013. That’s a very rough estimate from Giroir, and much of the timing will depend on how quickly the system can be miniaturized, and whether it actually works.

Giroir was also excited about the Pod’s potential civilian use, for when trauma centers are often too far away to save a patient’s life. Local hospitals could stock a single Trauma Pod, and have a surgeon thousands of miles away assist in stabilizing the patient.

They say there are no video or photos available but here at docinthemachine I posted a report and videos of the systems concept and prototypes back last year. You see the post and all the clips at Awesome Army Videos-Terminator 2025 Battlefield Surgery Built NOW!

For Those Who Want More DARPA Hi Tech Medical Information: I have prevously written about DARPA and the medical offshoots of its research . You can read about why DARPA can take the big risks in medical development private industry won’t in Risky Business:Why DARPA Does What Medical Industry Won’t. Be sure to read Army Axing High-Tech Soldier of Tomorrow- MedTech Losses Predicted for all ofthemedicalbenefits of the Soldier of Tomorrow “Land Warrior” Program. You can read about the history and future projects planned by DARPA in 2007 in DARPA Releases Strategic Plan 2007 and about it’s amazing array of projects in DARPA 2007 Pt2: Major Achievements, Future Plans, & Medical Benefits (including Newton’s Laws for Biology, Prosthetics, Biological Warfare Defense, and Real-Time Accurate Language Translation).

Come back tomorrow for my next post reviewing the other robots they showcased…

New 3-wheel Hybrid Vehicle- motorcycle killer carver?

Posted on February 16, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

This is bit off-topic for me but piqued my curisoity. The Venture is a step closer to hitting the US shores. It’s also backed by BMW which won’t hurt. What is it? A brand new 100 MPH+ 3-wheel motor-pod steet carver. As they write in gizmag:

February 16, 2007 Venture Vehicles has formally announced in Los Angeles, the development of a revolutionary (not to mention very cool), 3-wheel, tilting, plug-in Hybrid vehicle under the working name VentureOne. It’s a two-passenger Hybrid vehicle that will get 100 mpg, accelerate from 0-60 in 6 seconds, will have a top speed of over 100 mph, while being priced at under US$20,000. In addition to the low-emission, flex-fuel Hybrid model, a zero-emission all-electric version is also being developed that will have an all-electric range of nearly 200 miles. A key feature of the VentureOne is the patented Dynamic Vehicle Control tilting technology from Dutch-based Carver Engineering that allows the body of the vehicle to actually tilt when going through turns while all three wheels maintain firm contact with the road. Carver already sells petrol-engined versions of the machine, and the Phiaro 3-wheeler is also closely based on the Carver. But a plug-in hybrid with a 200 mile electric range and sportscar performance is very enticing. Production is not scheduled until late 2008 and Venture Vehicles will initially offer two propulsion packages for the VentureOne: the hybrid E50 and Q100, and all-electric Venture EV model. The US$23,000 all-electric model will top the range while the E50 hybrid will sell for US$18,000 and the Q100 hyrbid is expected to be priced under US$20,000.

check out the links to the compnay above to see some cool videos. One concern, the thing is WAY low to the ground. Not too cool with all those Hummers driving around…