By Isabella Bachman<\/p>\n
The BU student chapter of the\u00a0Biomedical Engineering Society<\/a>, in collaboration with Bioengineering Technology & Entrepreneurship Center (BTEC)<\/a>, hosted the second annual BTEC x BMES Design-A-Thon on April 27th. The design challenged students to develop a product or service that will yield positive health outcomes for and\/or increase access to healthcare technologies in underserved communities. <\/span><\/p>\n Throughout the academic year student teams, under the guidance of BTEC faculty and graduate students, develop a product or service, which is then presented to a panel of judges at the end of the year. Design-A-Thon equips students with the knowledge and skills to address societal challenges in the healthcare industry by enhancing diversity considerations within the design process.<\/p>\n Seven finalist student teams presented their projects. The two first-place teams, BreatheRight and Osto-Pop, received an award of $1,000, while the runner-up teams, BUzz Bracelet and Mobile Vision, received $500. Graduate student mentors Dev Bhatt (BME PhD\u201928) and Alex Howard (BME PhD\u201928) also received $100 for their advisory roles.<\/p>\n The BreatheRight team was composed of three BME undergraduate students: Yash Patel, Nikita Vinay Kishan and Luca Pungan (BME BS’25). The team created a device that attaches to most asthma inhalers to monitor medication intake and respiratory function. This information is sent to a smart phone app, which then records the data, providing useful information to patients and healthcare professionals. The device and monitoring application are expected to provide a critical tool for asthma management, especially to underrepresented groups which have higher incidences of asthma<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Two BME juniors, Ananya Pemaraj and Shadin Almaiman (BME BS’25), were on the Osto-Pop team. They developed a low-cost device for elderly colectomy patients with less manual dexterity to better access their colostomy bag. It is also designed to reduce odor and gas.<\/p>\n Industry partners were notably pivotal to the success of this event. Merck Research Labs sponsored the prizes and sent several representatives to give a presentation on their biologics research program.<\/p>\n The panel of judges included: Professor of the Practice Diane Joseph-McCarthy<\/strong><\/a> (BME, Chem), Executive Director of BTEC; Associate Professor Michael Smith<\/strong><\/a> (BME, MSE); Research Assistant Professor Xiaojun Cheng<\/strong><\/a> (BME); Rohan Jadeja (MS\u201919), <\/strong>Systems Engineering Group, KMC Systems, Inc.; and Lecturer Kavon Karrobi<\/strong><\/a> (BME), BTEC Manager.<\/span><\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Biomedical Engineering Society, in collaboration with Bioengineering Technology & Entrepreneurship Center (BTEC), hosted the second annual BTEC x BMES Design-A-Thon on April 27th. The design challenged students to developing a product or service that will yield positive health outcomes for, and\/or increase access, to healthcare technologies in underserved communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22834,"featured_media":151998,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,899,1061,1000],"tags":[479,1214,1212,1083,1213,959],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151996"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22834"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151996"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152380,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151996\/revisions\/152380"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}