Thursday, June 8, 2006

Hopkins Students Close Chest with Zip Ties, Think They're So Smart

We'll start on a positive note. As part of an undergraduate biomedical engineering design project class, a group of students from Johns Hopkins University recognized an awesomely simple new way to close the chest after the sternum has been cut through: zip ties. To put it simply, zip ties rule. However, it seems Johns Hopkins might be giving the team more credit than is due...

The 11-member team's prototype won first-place honors in the university's recent Biomedical Engineering Design Day competition. The project's sponsor, Surgical Transformations LLC, has obtained a provisional patent covering the system. If the idea appeals to enough surgeons, the firm plans to support further research and development to produce a commercial model.
"The premise was based on an unmet need identified by cardiothoracic surgeons," Lloyd said. "The students came up with a working prototype that hit all of the engineering requirements we proposed. The end result was better than my partner and I expected, particularly given the limitations they had in terms of resources."

The students produced their prototype, which resembles a stapler and uses standard locking cable ties, for about $1,500. Much of this went to a private prototyping shop that built the device according to the students' detailed design drawings.

A roughly 8-inch curved piece extends from the handheld tool to guide the tie between and under the ribs, enabling a surgeon to connect both ends and pull the severed sternum parts toward one another. When one end of the tie is reinserted into the tool and the handles are squeezed, the device operates like a ratchet, tightening the clasp and bringing the pieces of the breastbone firmly together so that the healing process can begin.

In a class called Biomedical Engineering Design Teams, the project was adopted last fall by a group led by Chris Weier, a 23-year-old senior from Sterling Heights, Mich., and Neha Malhotra, a 20-year-old junior from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Weier added: "This was not just a textbook problem. This was like a real-life industrial project with deadlines and patent searches."

Let us get this straight: as part of your BME education you have to design a medical device at some point? With deadlines? When sending a part out to be built the drawings need detail?

We're all for the simplest solution to a problem, with zip ties frequently embodying this solution. However, it took an 11 person team to give us a prototype consisting of a Sawbones model with the ribs zip-tied together? And this won a design competition? And for this the school decided to issue a press release? To paraphrase Lord Vader: "Unimpressive...most unimpressive"

More from the Johns Hopkins press release...

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replies: 4 comments

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Apparently they did not do adequate patent searching. That concept was patented in the 1960's. It is not a novel solution, but the noveltly may lie with the delivery of the cable tie (i.e. the instrument that is described).

Posted by: Jimmy
on June 8, 2006 11:29 AM GMT

For as harsh as I was with these guys, frequently in design classes the bulk of the workload (and quality of your project) has little to do with the novelty or innovation of your design, but rather the quality of writeups, web pages, presentations, etc that go along with it.

That, and things like the deployment tool can become the bulk of the project, even though it's the initial concept that gets all the attention.

Still...I've seen countless better design projects go without press releases. I guess some schools are better at self-promotion than others. Maybe that's why their BME program is ranked #1 by US News and World Reports while my alma mater is #3.

Posted by: TimO
on June 8, 2006 11:55 AM GMT

Perhaps it would've been a truly useful product if they had actually developed an appropriate clasp, as discussed in the source article:

"Although the students used commercial cable ties for their prototype, they said patients would best be served by a biocompatible polymer clasp that would dissolve harmlessly in the body after two years, when the sternum is fully healed."

The mechanism for applying the tie may be original, but it seems like such a small step up from simply applying the tie by hand. Developing an initial workup for the discussed clasp would be a much bigger step. I find the idea of using traditional zip ties as closures, with their sharp edged polyethylene construction, to be rather frightening.

Posted by: Plaid
on June 13, 2006 02:09 PM GMT

Having worked with this team extensively, I find some of the comments a little condescending. The team consisted of 11 members (6 freshman), all of whom had very specific tasks to accomplish; designing something like a chest closure system, while outwardly simple, consists of many factors, all of which must be carefully considered. While zip-ties are not an incredibly novel idea, the materials used to create them and the prototype insertion device that the team came up with, was unique. As for comments on the the plastic model, this was merely used to convey the ideas to non-scientific observors. The design for the cable ties wasn't simply ripped directly from present commercial products; modifactions were made to both the clasp and the overall geometry of the bands. Perhaps the details weren't conveyed as thoroughly as necessary.

Posted by: Chris
on July 17, 2006 07:46 PM GMT

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Thursday, June 8, 2006

Hopkins Students Close Chest with Zip Ties, Think They're So Smart