Rowan engineering, medical students present on biodesign projects at Cooper University Hospital

Six biomedical engineering students from the Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering and three medical students from the Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine presented findings on a range of topics they researched this summer at Cooper University Hospital on Friday, July 8,

The students in the competitive Summer Bioengineering Clinical Immersion program funded by a five-year grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health learned the biodesign process, were immersed in clinic units at Cooper, found numerous needs and are writing needs specifications and learning translation tips.  

The students spent six weeks in the program, rotating through different departments, such as Trauma, ICU, NICU and Emergency Medicine.

They presented posters featuring detailed needs specifications and discussed their observations, the problems and needs they saw, affected populations, stakeholder analysis and solution criteria.

Among the topics they covered are:

• The need to improve the organization of emergency supplies used in the care of cardiac patients to increase immediate survival rates.
• The need to standardize the registration and triage system to increase patient flow in the emergency department.
• The need to reduce the incidence of hospital-acquired anemia due to routine blood draws in ICU patients, to reduce U.S. hospital costs by $40 billion per year.
• The need to prevent pressure ulcers in acute care hospital patients to reduce hospital costs ($11 billion per year).
• A way to decrease the number of fall-acquired injuries among the elderly (older than 65 years) to reduce the treatment costs by at least 10 percent.
• The need to optimize resident and clinician work hours to reduce burnout and medical errors.

The Rowan program, which was designed to provide insight into health care solutions of the future, encourages students to pursue a biodesign approach to real-world problems.  The plan is then to transition some of these needs into hands-on projects in the Engineering Clinics to improve health and health care with potential product or process solutions based on the needs.

The program, also supported by non-government organization VentureWell, enables engineering and medical students not only to collaborate but also to learn from each other. In the biodesign process, they learn to identify problems related to health and health care and start planning solutions to those problems.