Christopher (Chris) Shin, Paul Ogan, Tobias (Toby) Meng-Saccoccio, Albert Wu, Evrim Ozcan, and Venkatsai (Shri) Bellala are a team of seniors in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. They’ve known each other since freshman year. Now, in their BME Capstone, they are working together to alter the future of emergency drug delivery. 

At the beginning of the fall semester, clinicians came into their capstone class and presented different engineering problems they were facing in their fields. Chris, Paul, Toby, Albert, Evrim, and Shri all chose to partner with Lifespan’s Hasbro Children’s Hospital and Brown Emergency Medicine.

Their mission was to “redesign the three-way stopcock, a small device used in intravenous administration of a lot of drugs,” said Toby. In emergency settings, the device is used to deliver very small doses of a drug called adenosine, which is used to treat supraventricular tachycardia–an irregularly fast and erratic heartbeat. 

The current device design requires two clinical providers to administer a dose, which decreases the efficiency with which providers can treat patients. The design also often leaves a large proportion of the drug dose undelivered, which can have a big impact on patient outcomes.

In the case of young children and infants, the doses of adenosine are already quite small. When not all of that small dose is delivered, “providers will have to double the subsequent dose,” said Shri. “If that fails, they will have to revert to more severe methods such as electric cardioversion.”

Previous research had demonstrated that “a large percentage of (infants) will need a second dose, and it won’t even work,” said Evrim. Early on, Toby, Chris, and Paul worked on identifying exactly how much of the drug dose was lost. The team found that “the amount of drug loss becomes astronomical–between 20 and 75 percent based on the patient weight,” Evrim continued. 

Throughout the fall, they tested dozens of designs and prototyped three main versions. Come spring, their design had totally changed. “I think it really just goes to show how iterative of a process this is,” said Toby. “It was really cool to see actual improvement, even though there was kind of a ‘two steps forward, one step back.’”

Having worked with their clinician partners from Brown Emergency Medicine and Lifespan, Dr. Sakina Sojar and Dr. Patrick Lee, throughout the process, they went down to Lifespan’s Coro Simulation Center to test models of their device. “We were able to kind of put one of our prototypes in the hands of our advisors, and they were able to give us real-time feedback on everything,” said Toby. 

Their advisors encouraged them to make the device more comfortable to hold. “Working with them hand-in-hand was definitely instrumental in making sure the device we create is something that clinicians will want to use,” said Toby. They also had to ensure that their version of the device maintained the “stepwise” delivery of the drug and saline, and was compatible with the other systems used in hospitals. 

Throughout the design process, the team divided the work to play to their strengths. “With this amount of people (on our team) we were able to cover each other’s weaknesses,” Shri said “We’ve had a lot of fun,” added Toby. “We work together very well.”  

 In the areas where they did struggle, they found help from Professors and advisors. Professors Lindsay Schneider, Anubhav Tripathi, Theresa Raimondo, and Marissa Gray helped guide them throughout the Capstone courses. Professors Roberto Zenit and Daniel Harris “were instrumental in teaching us the basics of how to run simulations,” said Chris.

With that collaboration, the team proved incredibly successful. They’ve received over $10,000 in funding from the Halpin Prize, Rothberg Catalyzer funding, and the Hazeltine Maker Grant. On April 5, they presented two posters at the 50th Northeast Bioengineering Conference.

Chris said that many people at the conference were surprised that the issues with the three-way stopcock hadn’t already been addressed. “It’s kind of crazy how there’s no solution to this, even though it’s such a big problem that encompasses different aspects of engineering,” he said. 

Now that the team has a final design, they are pursuing intellectual property (IP) rights as the first step for bringing their product to market. “On a bigger picture scale, we recognize how saturated of a market medical devices are,” said Toby. Because of that, they recognized how important it was to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset and create a device that solved a real-world problem. 

“Engineers have a tendency to solve, solve, solve, but it doesn’t really get us solutions to humanity if there is no real problem that exists. You don’t want to start hammering on something that’s not really there. You want to hammer on a nail,” said Chris. “That’s the crucial part of entrepreneurship.”

The IP process was a learning experience for the team. “It’s definitely not a traditional thing that all BME students have to look into,” said Toby. “It was very cool for us to learn how to navigate that space.” 

The team emphasized the help they received from Professor Anubhav Tripathi, who has done a lot of previous work taking ideas out of the lab and into industry. Right now, they are waiting to hear back from some of their collaborators before they can begin considering patenting, manufacturing, or licensing. 

With their senior year quickly coming to a close, the team is headed in different directions–with some pursuing medical school or graduate programs. However, continuing to work on their design “could be in the cards,” said Toby. “We’ll still be within clinically adjacent spaces,” said Shri. “Those kinds of experiences will enable us to see current issues (in Biomedical Engineering) and make our own innovations.”

The team is also developing an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award for future Brown students to collect data from nurses and doctors who use their device. 

Regardless of how the IP process ends up, Evrim emphasized that the team’s primary goal is to get their design into the hands of hospital providers. “I think it’s most important for us to get this device to market,” said Evrim. “Because we really think we have something that we’ve found to have a significant clinical impact. It’s not just another plastic syringe.”