Skip to main content Skip to navigation

ABSPIE projects

Show all news items

CANCELLED - Summer School on design of medical devices resilient to low-resource settings.

School of Engineering, University of Warwick

This event has been cancelled and we'll let you know when it will be rescheduled.

In light of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, there is clear need for a novel generation of experts trained to design medical devices responding to real needs of low-and middle- income countries (LMICs) and in particular Sub-Saharan Africa.

This school aims at gathering world leading experts in medical device design, 3D-printing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Health Technology Assessment (HTA), clinical engineering, device management, regulations and ethics who will inspire a multidisciplinary pool of Early Career Researchers and PhD students from high- and LMICs to work together facing global health challenges.

In a series of frontal classes, tailored workshops and hands-on sessions, attendees will learn-by-doing the main workflow for designing medical devices and how to make them resilient to limited resources settings and sustainable. This will include methods for need assessment, risk analysis, application to real life scenarios, global regulatory frameworks, ethical issues, principles of local and circular design and manufacturing, health economic methods and tools.

Leveraging on previous experiences [1], the participants will be split into groups, assigned to different projects and required to design a functioning prototype with the help of tutors and mentors. We can anticipate that the prototypes will be based on the use of low-cost plug-and-play electronic development kits (e.g., Arduino), smartphones and 3D printing and manufacturing as per our previous experience [2]. Attendees will be briefed in advance, provided with reading material and video-tutorials in order to make the school the most effective possible. The best project will be awarded a prize (subject to budget availability).

The training will be held on the newly refurbished clinical engineering lab and of the Engineering Building Space. The Engineering Build Space is more than just a 3D printing facility, it’s probably one of the best equipped academic maker space in the UK. This was designed and realized in 2018 as realization of learn-by-doing multidiscipline pedagogic philosophy. Together with the pre-existing designing spaces it position Warwick as one of the best places in the world where such a school can be conceived and hosted.

Learning outcomes

The school will be mainly focused on the design of medical devices, and to explore the use of local manufacturing methods to make this design sustainable in LMICs and limited resources settings. Learning outcomes will include:

  • Deepen regulatory requirements for medical device design
  • Learn methods and procedures for medical device design
  • Learn how to generate relevant evidence in medicine and biology
  • Learn how to apply methods and tools for need-analysis and context-driven medical device design
  • Learn how to assess, in a very early stage, the potential impact (e.g., prospective cos-utility) of medical devices
Novelty of training

The combination of different pedagogic methods (frontal classes, tailored workshop and hands-on sessions) along with the focus on contextual and frugal design of medical devices resilient to LMICs will offer an unprecedented multidisciplinary learning opportunity. The number of attendees will be limited and the participants will be organised in groups. Candidates will be carefully selected to guarantee that in each groups there is sufficient knowledge of fundamental topics (e.g., biology/medicine, coding, 3D manufacturing, electronics etc.). Each group will be assigned a medical device, and groups will have to deliver its final design, possibly also a working prototype, by the end of the school. Frontal lectures will be reduced to the minimum possible, but all the lectures will keep working with the different group basing on their own area of expertise (e.g., risk assessment, trial design, clinical engineering, regulatory science, health economic, human factors, mechanical/electronic manufacturing etc.). Each group will be assisted by tutors and will be assigned a virtual budget to spend for 'buying', consultants' time, to prepare a technical file for their medical device, and for manufacturing the working prototypes. All the prototypes will be finally tested against relevant international standards for medical device safety, using the ABSPIE equipment.

The Applied Biomedical Signal Processing eHealth (ABSPIE) Lab had already organised the first International Summer School on Health Technology Assessment [3], which was then adopted as model from the International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE), which is now regularly running those training events internationally, every two years [4]. Also in this case the target audience were early career researchers, but the focus and layout of the school were different.

Target

· PhD students or early career researchers interested in medical device and global health.

· Candidates with interest/experience in medical devices design will be given priority

· a number of places will be reserved for attendees coming from other than engineering disciplines (i.e., social sciences, philosophy, liberal arts, medicine, …).

Academics/Tutors
  • Dr Leandro Pecchia, School Director
  • Prof Francesco Cappuccio [epidemiology of cardiovascular disease, global health]
  • Dr Simon Leigh [Additive Manufacturing]
  • Dr Alessia Maccaro [Bioethics, Philosophy]
  • Dr Sam Agbroko [Electronic Engineering]
  • Prof Daniel Clark [Clinical Engineering]
  • Dr Almir Badnjevic [Medical Device metrology]
  • Prof Arti Ahwulalia [PI UBORA project – Biomedical engineering]
  • Dr Carmelo De Maria [PI UBORA project – Biomedical engineering]
  • Dr Simone Borsci [Human Factors]
  • Dr Sudesh Sivarasu [Medical Device Design]
  • Prof Daton Medenou [Biomedical Engineering]
  • Miss Philippa Makobore [Electrical Engineering]
  • Prof Stefano Severi [Biomedical Engineering]
  • Dr Ernesto Iadanza [Clinical Engineering]
  • Davide Piaggio [Medical Devices in LMICs]
  • Dr Silvio Pagliara [Assistive Technology]
School Sponsoring/Endorsement
This event has been cancelled and we'll let you know when it will be rescheduled.
Sun 26 Jan 2020, 12:27 | Tags: LMIC, medical device