VCU College of Engineering students partner with the School of Medicine to solve global health problems
ACCESS Vertically Integrated Project gathers students from many disciplines to improve healthcare availability
Hours or days away from the nearest medical facility, people living in remote or underserved communities have limited access to healthcare. A team of engineers, doctors, researchers and students at Virginia Commonwealth University are tackling this problem through the Acute Medical Care and Systems Strengthening (ACCESS) Vertically Integrated Project (VIP). With a focus on global health, the team seeks creative solutions for health delivery, including improving access to surgical procedures and advanced diagnostic screenings.
Co-led by Edgar Rodas, M.D., associate professor of surgery at the VCU School of Medicine, the team is co-advised by Rebecca Heise, Ph.D., Inez A. Caudill, Jr. Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Thea Pepperl, Ph.D., biomedical engineering assistant professor, and Aamer Syed, M.D., associate professor of internal medicine at the VCU School of Medicine. The program is one of several VIP initiatives providing interdisciplinary experiential learning that prepare College of Engineering students for the real-world challenges they will face after graduation.
“College of Engineering students are working on several projects through the ACCESS VIP program,” says Pepperl. “However, the starting point is a project’s viability in a low-resource environment. For example: One student team is developing a reusable tracheostomy kit that can be sterilized using an autoclave, reducing the need for a new implement with each patient.”
A Roadmap for Collaboration
Initially formed by Rodas and Sudha Jayaraman, M.D. (now at the University of Utah) in 2019, ACCESS is an umbrella program that includes the College of Engineering VIP partnership. Its goal is to train the next generation of global health practitioners. At the start of the fall semester, College of Engineering students attend the VCU School of Medicine’s ACCESS symposium to meet with global health leaders who provide insight to the challenges doctors face in low-resource medical environments.
“The symposium helps medical and engineering students identify what needs to be worked on,” says Pepperl. “Once the requirements for a project start to form, there’s an initial brainstorming session on the medical campus and a follow-up brainstorming session on the engineering campus. We want to create opportunities for collaborative innovation. As medical and engineering students become familiar with each other’s working environments, they can begin to find ways to solve problems identified at the symposium.”
Hosted at the Maker Studio, the College of Engineering’s brainstorming session enlists help from Charles Cartin, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering and Makerspace director. Ideas become tangible during this phase as students use Computer Aided Design (CAD) software to create digital models of products that address their project needs.
These CAD designs eventually become physical prototypes with the help of the Makerspace’s additive manufacturing facilities. Design prototypes are then tested with the help of the Center for Human Simulation and Patient Safety located at VCU Health’s Medical College of Virginia (MCV) Campus.
Engineering in a Clinical Setting
Once engineering students begin with ACCESS VIP, they spend time side-by-side with doctors, learning about the tools and procedures professionals use and finding opportunities for improvements. This includes working in operating rooms, intensive care units and clinics alongside students from the VCU School of Medicine. This ensures ACCESS VIP engineers have a clinical frame of reference and can understand the real-world, day-to-day needs of doctors and clinical researchers.
“We want engineering and medical students to have a firm understanding of clinical needs, but with the VIP our goal is to empower them to design beyond the clinical setting, considering the greater picture of lower and middle income countries,” says Vikram Seshadri, VCU medical student and an ACCESS VIP team lead. “It’s College of Engineering students who are spearheading the inception, development and creation of devices and solutions that will be used to solve big global health challenges.”
Fitting a Surgical Room in a Truck
Bringing surgical facilities to remote locations is one of several projects ACCESS VIP engineers participate in. Through the Cinterandes Foundation, a mobile surgical truck helps provide medical care in Ecuador. Throughout the country, more than 10 million people do not have access to health services, according to 2021 statistical data from the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Censos. Doctors are typically concentrated in big cities, so the distribution of healthcare becomes challenging. In the province of Pichincha, for example, there are two doctors per 1,000 people.
“The equipment comprising a surgical room takes up a lot of space,” says Seshadri. “Engineering students contribute to many aspects of the optimization and design of the surgical truck, encompassing all areas of the profession from process engineering to mechanical engineering and even computer science.”
Laparoscopes are one tool being redesigned by ACCESS VIP students. In laparoscopic surgery, short, narrow tubes are inserted into the abdomen through small incisions. These tubes enable the use of long, narrow instruments a surgeon uses to manipulate, cut and sew tissue. Laparoscopic machines are a form of robotic surgery and the tower housing the collection of manipulator arms, each with a corresponding tube and instrument, is large.
“We have a team working with Dr. Rodas to redesign the laparoscopic tower, which sits at the intersection of several engineering specializations, says Seshadri. “College of Engineering students are actually building and prototyping these devices so they fit within the truck’s framework. There’s also the question of optimizing the framework itself and redesigning other aspects of the surgical suite, like the patient’s bed. In all this work, students are also considering environmental impact and ways we can make the truck eco friendly. Dr. Rodas wants to minimize the carbon footprint of this endeavor as much as possible.”
A Flexible, Flexible Bronchoscope
Two kinds of bronchoscopes exist: A flexible version for diagnostics capable of exploring a patient’s airway, sometimes as far as individual bronchioles, and a rigid version used for patient interventions, like stopping heavy bleeding or removing foreign objects from the airway.
A second venture of the ACCESS VIP is designing a bronchoscope that is flexible in purpose. The dual-function design can be physically flexible for an initial diagnostic and become rigid when needed for a surgical procedure.
“A device like this can be invaluable within a global health setting, especially in cases where the care must come to the patient, like with the Cinterandes Foundation’s mobile surgical truck,” says Seshadri. “Dr. Syed, our co-advisor, is an engineer and started the work for this project in 2010, using piezoelectrics to enable the dual-purpose design.”
College of Engineering students working with medical students at the VCU School of Medicine have recently completed a new tube design for the dual-function bronchoscope. The device will be tested through the Center for Human Simulation and Patient Safety.
Designing with Real-World Constraints
Remote locations, low-resource areas, economic constraints and other challenges impose strong limits on ACCESS VIP engineers. Restrictions on funding and materials often result in projects that are environmentally sustainable as well as financially feasible.
“Like with the tracheostomy kit Dr. Pepperl mentioned, designs that can be reused through autoclave sterilization or other means are critical,” says Heise. “The environmental impact is something students consider and there’s a lot of crossover, but the sustainability aspect comes from keeping costs down. In many low-resource areas, bringing new supplies in can be costly or even physically improbable.”
The Department of Biomedical Engineering provides undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to perform real-world research as soon as they enroll. From delving into the intricacies of cell migration in cancer research to exploring tissue engineering in menisci, tendons and ligaments, our students pursue a diverse range of cutting-edge research topics. Browse videos and recent news from the Department of Biomedical Engineering to discover how the College of Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University prepares the next generation of scientists and engineers for the challenges of the future.
Categories Biomedical Engineering, Student Stories, Undergraduate Student Stories