Last weekend, our Social Media Chair, Christianne Chua, and her three teammates represented GW Biomedical Engineering at the 2019 BMES Coulter College in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A distinguished program focused on educating students in the “translation of biomedical innovations,” Coulter College recruits “mentors in key problem areas [the 2019 cycle featured structural heart, chronic hypertension, or type 2 diabetes disease management] to guide student teams through a highly dynamic process designed to help them better understand how innovations can meet clinical needs, while providing tools and approaches used to develop novel solutions for identified clinical problems” (read more about BMES Coulter College here). The conference convened at Medtronic facilities and was further supported by the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation and the Biomedical Engineering Society.

Invitation to the program is highly competitive as only 12 teams comprising 4 students and a single senior design faculty mentor are selected nationwide. Anastasia Carr, Christianne Chua (our Social Media Chair and 2019 Medical Solutions Participant), Camille Daszynski (2019 Medical Solutions Participant), and Mercedes Suazo (2018 Medical Solutions Participant) as well as capstone faculty mentor Dr. David Lee were notified in May of their acceptance into Coulter College and assigned type 2 diabetes disease management.

From there, an intensive period of preparation began for the team. After compiling a lengthy pre-assignment researching their assigned disease, conducting clinician interviews, and attending multiple BMES-hosted webinars, the GW quartet whittled down their 20-page deliverable into several need statements required by program coordinators upon arrival to Minneapolis.

From Thursday afternoon through Sunday morning, the team experienced a completely immersive agenda of lectures, facility tours, and professional meetings with a diverse panel of clinicians, industry leaders, business mentors, designers, and venture capitalists. This intensive series of scheduled activities allowed the GW team to tailor its final design towards the guiding goals of promoting greater affordability, personalization, and actionability within the type 2 diabetes community. In a collaborative effort, they worked day and night to conceptualize a solution that best fit around the need for patients to remain motivated in chronic management of lifestyle. Each day, the team was expected to present additional components of device design, intellectual property, regulatory landscape, and business model to a cohort of judges.

Congratulations to the team for their strong performance throughout the program! We wish you the best start to your senior year and cannot wait to see where this experience takes you!