Medical Product Innovator
THE STONE SUCKER 4000
The Stone Sucker 4000 was created for Managing Medical Products R&D (BIOENG 2166) where we were tasked with needs finding, ideation, finding product-market fit, regulatory and reimbursement considerations. We performed ethnographic studies, stakeholder analysis, came up with design concepts, consulted clinicians and developed a financial forecast!
Many of the teams in this class were provided with an idea by a clinician but in the case of our team we were left to come up with our own concerning kidney stone removal. My brainstorming activity that really got us moving towards a solution was "8 ideas in 8 minutes" where in a minute you must sketch an idea no matter how good or how terrible it is! From this we focused in on four ideas of kidney stone removal: suction, washing away the stones, picking up the stones with a basket and dissolving the stones.
This video is from an Ureteroscopy that I was fortunate enough to observe myself! During the procedure Dr. Jackman of UPMC was gracious enough to answer my questions surrounding innovation for this procedure. I learned that removing the kidney stones only happened after they had been adequately fragmented by a laser. The removal process is extremely tedious because the basket for collection only could hold one kidney stone fragment at a time. I mentioned our ideas from the brainstorming and he was most enthusiastic about a suctioning method but warned that the suction device must be very small as to fit in the device they use to traverse to the kidney.
Initial Design Concept
Create a vacuum add-on to existing ureteroscope with laser and basket
The Stone Sucker 3000 was our initial design concept, the premise behind it is that it would encompass the ureterscope as it is traversed through the ureter to the kidney. We decided this because we thought there was some room to work in this lumen.
After clinical feedback, we learned that there was not enough space in the ureter with the ureteroscope inserted to successfully suction stones. The clinicians liked the concept but suggested looking at the access sheath, how the ureteroscope is inserted, and considering adding suction and irrigation abilities to the access sheath.
Second Design Concept
