This post is part of the Biodesign’s Jugaad series following a group of Stanford Biodesign fellows from India. (Jugaad is a Hindi word that means an inexpensive, innovative solution.) The fellows will spend months immersed in the interdisciplinary environment of Stanford Bio-X, learning the Biodesign process of researching clinical needs and prototyping a medical device. The Biodesign program is now in its 14th year, and past fellows have successfully launched 36 companies focused on developing devices for unmet medical needs.
When the Indian biodesign fellows observed a pacemaker implantation earlier this year, the surgeon spent four hours trying to firmly insert wires from the pacemaker into the heart muscle. Even after a painstaking surgery, the wires fall out in about five percent of cases. That's an expensive and risky problem.
The team's solution, which was officially revealed at the biodesign symposium last week, is a device made of popsicle sticks and a spring that attaches to the long wire that screws into the heart. The spring records the amount of force a surgeon uses when screwing in the wire. If it records a higher force, that likely means the screw went firmly into the heart muscle. A lower force means it might not have inserted well and the surgeon should try again.
The team presented their prototype to an audience of faculty, the program's alumni and local business leaders. Harsh Sheth, MD, said their inexpensive solution to a widespread problem met with good reviews. "We were strongly encouraged to continue developing this," he said. The team needs to finish their fellowship, but they say they might return to the idea when they are done.
Sheth and his fellow teammates Shashi Ranjan, PhD, and Debayan Saha, all had prior experience in either surgery or engineering but had never been through a deliberative process that would result in a device that combines medical needs, engineering expertise and business sense.
They'll take their newfound skills back to India, where they'll start the process over in the second phase of their fellowship. Their departure marks the end of Indian biodesign fellows spending immersive time at Stanford. Ranjan told me that he's glad he applied to the program when he did rather than waiting a year, when he would have done the entire program in India.
"Being at Stanford was an amazing experience," he said. "We had access to Silicon Valley, business, technology. We don't have anything like that [at home]." In the future, fellows might visit the U.S. or other partner countries for shorter stays, and Stanford fellows will have opportunities to learn about biodesign in India.
Previously: Success breeds success: Early innovators in India created a sense of possibility, A jugaad for keeping pacemakers in plac, The next challenge for biodesign: constraining health-care costs and Stanford-India Biodesign co-founder: Our hope is to “inspire others and create a ripple effect” in India
Photo by Amy Adams
