Voiland School partners with Medical School on Senior Design Projects

Medical educators have long wrestled with the challenge of giving students enough realistic practice before they encounter their first patients. Clinical skills, such as interpreting vital signs and navigating a laparoscope, are hard to learn from lectures alone.

A group of Washington State University bioengineering students are helping address that need by creating prototype medical-training devices that give medical students more opportunities to hone their skills.

The projects are mutually beneficial, said Dmitri Tolkatchev, assistant professor in the Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering who teaches the capstone class. Three teams of senior-level bioengineering students are working with students in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine on projects aimed at improving medical education and patient care.

"The purpose of this program is to create bioengineers many of whom will typically be working in medical industries," said Tolkatchev. "The best way to do that is to expose them to authentic clinical problems and the kinds of real-world uncertainties that they will encounter in their professional work."

Three teams of senior-level bioengineering students are working with students in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine on projects aimed at improving medical education and patient care.

One team of students is creating a training simulator for students to learn about arterial pressure and oxygen saturation. The device will provide real-time data to help medical students practice and become comfortable with the important tools that are used every day to make clinical decisions and decide on a diagnosis.

"The medical students really don't have that experience yet," said Miles Wilson, a bioengineering senior who is working on the training simulator, "so this simulator would be their first opportunity to see how these measurements look in the real world."

The simulator aims to simulate a variety of disease states, like hypertension, coronary heart disease, or atrial fibrillation, providing a dashboard of blood pressure and pulse oximetry readings for students to interpret.

"This device aims to bridge that gap with your classroom knowledge," said Josh Van Tuyl, another team member.

Another of the bioengineering groups is developing a laparoscopic surgery training device - a box-like simulator that will allow medical students to practice minimally invasive, laparoscopic procedures before trying out the procedures on cadavers or a patient. A third project focuses on airway management, with students designing a realistic intubation trainer that mimics the feel of human tissue.

Bringing the students to the medical school to work on real-world projects grew out of conversations with Olivia Coiado, assistant dean for student and resident research at the College of Medicine, said Tolkatchev.

"Partnering with medical students works well - they learn how engineering fits into healthcare," he said.

As part of the project, the students also are learning valuable career skills, such as project management. They study industry standards and regulatory guidelines, including documentation.

"They're learning not just how to build, but how to manage projects and meet real-world constraints," said Tolkatchev.

They're also learning how to communicate with students and professionals in a different field of study.

"Up until now, all of our projects have been communicating between engineers," said Wilson. "We don't really speak the same language as medical students and doctors, so communicating with them and figuring out what they want and need has been a bit of a learning curve, but it's a really an invaluable opportunity."

The teams will be showing preliminary results of the prototypes on Dec. 8. The final prototype demonstration for the two-semesterclass is scheduled in mid-April.