MIT 2.75 Engineering Medical Devices Overview

With the goal of engaging graduate students and accelerating ideas into prototypes, teams of MIT graduate engineering students spend a semester collaborating with clinicians in CIMIT-affiliated hospitals to develop innovative medical devices. Clinicians (physicians, nurses, and scientists) present clinical problems and initial ideas. Students form teams to work with the clinicians to turn these ideas into reality. The goal is for the students to deliver a working prototype and a journal-quality article in one semester. In its fifth year, the course has been a great opportunity for clinicians to test out new ideas and to stimulate new collaborations. For example, Robopsy, a robotic device to assist radiologists performing tumor biopsies was invented by an MIT team led by Rajiv Gupta, MD, in 2004. The team was awarded the 2007 MIT $100K prize, the world's leading entrepreneurship competition and the 2008 ASME Innovation Showcase. Join us to hear from the teams of 2008.

Forum Summary

Intubation is commonly performed procedure in intensive care units, but the traditional method of intubation does not always work for patients with abnormal airways.  Facial trauma or obesity, for example, can make it impossible to thread an endotracheal tube through the mouth into the trachea.  When normal intubation is infeasible, a technique known as retrograde intubation can be used.  This procedure involves running a guide wire through a small hole in the trachea and into the mouth and then using the guide wire to guide an endotracheal tube into the trachea.  This process is currently time-consuming and difficult to perform, but it is hoped that technological advances could make it a useful technique in the future.

Students from MIT worked with Joan Spiegel, MD, to create new devices to make retrograde intubation easier.  Many of their devices are based on the idea that pulling the endotracheal tube into place using the guide wire is easier than pushing the endotracheal tube along the guide wire.  They designed a number of clasping mechanisms to secure the guide wire to the endotracheal tube.  They found that there was often a tradeoff between clasping strength and the ease with which the guide wire was introduced into the clasping mechanism.  They tested their devices in the simulation center at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, but because their testing was largely qualitative, it was difficult for them to determine which of their devices worked best.  They found that threading the guide wire into the mouth through the trachea was the most difficult part of retrograde intubation, and they also found the design of the guide wire to have a large effect on the ease of the procedure.   

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