Author: ajl7hu
Looking Back
This past semester has definitely been a busy one, but it has also been very rewarding. Between all of the required BME courses and electives I took, I think that this semester has been the most challenging, but its also the first time I truly felt like I have been learning material that is extremely applicable to my future in all of my classes. First year was filled with the Gen-Ed’s of the E-School and second year seemed like the Gen-Ed’s of BME. Now, I feel like everything I have learned is going to be extremely relevant to my future.
This design course has really helped me gauge a better understanding of what I want to do with my life. Although the clinical exposure is what really motivated me to take this course, the clinical experiences were totally not what I expected. I thought these visits to the hospital would inspire me to want to become a physician or some type of health care provider. But looking back, this definitely is not the case. I really enjoyed these visits, but I now know that this is not the path I want to take.
The reason I don’t want to work entirely in a hospital setting is because I don’t like to see other people stressed out. I really don’t care if I’m stressed out, but on multiple visits I saw so many people patiently waiting in the PICU for their loved ones to get better. It really takes a special type of person to be able to handle this type of environment on a daily basis. I think that I may enjoy being an engineer who specializes in clinical settings. Something that I have talked about in other posts is that this course was the first time that I got a glimpse of what I imagined biomedical engineering to be like. I thought that I would constantly be working with people in the hospital in order to find solutions to medical problems. Therefore, I found it very surprising when I realized that a lot of BME research is computational.
Overall, I think that I want to do research that has a very clinically-oriented focus. Although I’m not sure exactly what research I want to specialize in, I know that I want to work closely with physicians to solve problems. I would prefer to work on more biology-physiology focused projects than device design, but I think the clinical exposure is essential to biomedical engineering. I feel like seeing these problems consistently arise in the hospital is even motivation to work harder and speed up the process of finding solutions. The last major take-away I have from this course is that you have to be confident, and even kind of risky when you are making decisions about any type of designs. I realize that (as long as nobody is at risk) the best designs are ones where you’re not afraid to fail. By not being afraid to take chances, and be willing to go against the norm, I think great solutions can arise in this field.
Finals Beginning
So tomorrow I have my first final in one of the most boring subjects known to man: Probability and Statistics. Studying for this for the past few days has been painfully boring and, in all honesty, I’m not expecting to do well. However, today I gave myself a reasonable excuse to stop studying in order to work on my design video with my group.
Maybe I’m really just stressed right now, but taking a break from hours alone in the library has made me start looking at everything through a “design lens.” For example, I was just going through one of exams from this semester and I was given the answer but not the solution. This problem had me shaking in the library because I was so mad. But I went through multiple iterations of this process trying to apply different concepts that showed up on practice exams, homework problems, etc. After about 30 minutes of this pain, I finally came up with the correct answer. But the point is I actually got the answer on my own, by looking to see at how I failed in other tries. Now I actually feel more prepared for the exam because the mistakes help me realize other concepts that I was struggling with.
That brings me to the point of this blog post. One thing I have personally found frustrating this semester is the wide range of opinions that my group has heard from encounters with nurses. Despite bringing in small prototypes and explaining our ideas with drawings, it always seemed like “the golden idea” to one nurse was another nurses worst nightmare. There wasn’t even really a middle ground with the opinions that we heard. But now, with less than a week left of school, I’m beginning to realize that its probably a good thing that we are getting such differing opinions. First of all, I feel like it means that the solution to this problem isn’t as trivial as it may appear, yet the problem is definitely present. Although the nurses all seemed to agree they do not like the current method, there are so many diverse characteristics between an individual nurse. Finding the problem to the solution isn’t as easy as listing options A, B and C. It is going to require a more hands on approach and collaboration with the “client” (i.e. nurses) in order to figure out that. Additionally, the differing opinions will likely expose other problems in the hospital. For example, one nurse may have a strong dislike towards technology designs because there are existing pieces of equipment that use technology unnecessarily and prove to be more inconvenient than helpful.
Overall, I’m realizing how important iterations truly are in the process of design. Whether the design is to solve a math problem or health care issue, it is important to look at the problem from multiple aspects. Although failing and having prototypes turned down is discouraging, it is necessary in order to determine the proper and most effective solution.
Blood Drawn
Hi everyone!
So this morning I had to wake up early and go to Student Health to get blood drawn. I hate getting my blood drawn. This really got me thinking about what I plan on doing with my BME degree upon graduation. In this post I am going to analyze my thoughts on the 3 typical paths a BME student takes upon graduation.
Let’s start with why I needed my blood drawn. So this summer I will be doing an REU at Wake Forest University at the Center for Injury Biomechanics. They sent me a form to fill out with all of these required tests, and naturally I needed more tests to be performed because that’s just how life works. However, these forms have really gotten me excited for the summer and the opportunity to expand my research experience and see additional labs that relate to BME. In my time at UVA, I have been involved in the Cardiac Biomechanics Group. I have been focusing on image analysis of rats that have been subjected to heart attacks. This work has really gotten me excited about research, however, I am searching for more of an experiment-focused research. At the same time, though, I am not a huge fan of “wet-lab.” I feel like everything always goes wrong with the experiment, which makes it difficult for me to develop strong opinions on the data analysis. Overall, though, I really like the real-world implications of research and the idea of making progressions to medicine. For this reason, I am extremely intrigued by the graduate school path and the idea of pursuing a PhD in BME.
On the other hand, I currently work as a server at a Sports Bar, which has introduced me to a fast pace work environment. Since I have seen every episode of Grey’s Anatomy, I was under the impression that being a physician is the fastest pace occupation that relates to healthcare. Granted it may be faster paced than research, this show definitely gives a skewed perception of what being a physician is actually like. After shadowing, I have seen that many specialties also have shifts that move very slow. Not every day is an action packed, dramatic story. The real benefit to being a physician, in my opinion, is being able to see the direct impact that your hard work has on others. In research, it could be years before you make a significant breakthrough. As a physician, I feel like you can see yourself helping someone every day. For this reason, I have definitely thought about taking some time off after college to prepare for medical school.
The last major BME path I can think of is industry–namely consulting. I don’t think consulting would be a good fit for me because I really hate how so many things in society are influenced by business decisions. Although I’m sure the PhD and Physician tracks would have significant business components to them (i.e. red-tape from universities or hospitals in regards to funding), they’re not nearly as economically-focused as consulting would be. I’m sure consultants get to work on some awesome projects, but I don’t think I would want to work somewhere where my job was about making decisions based off of what is cost-effectiveness, compared to what would help the most people. I don’t know, I just really don’t like business stuff.
So, the blood drawing really got me thinking. What is my current status and how does this relate to this course? Well, I think I really want to go into academia. Like I said earlier, I want to control the future of medicine, not just utilize a wide-range of (very important) knowledge to implement the plethora of current practices. In research, I feel like you get to be creative and take chances. There are so many opportunities to change experiments in order to gather new data and make new conclusions. I am still so new to the field of BME, but I feel like more time would really allow me to see the importance of this field and develop my passions. Well that’s all I have for now!
-Alex
Ultrasound Imaging
After the IDEAs module on ultrasound, I was fairly certain that I was not passionate about medical devices. Even though they are extremely important to BME, I always found the process of making the machines too technical and I was not really interested in it. Therefore, I was originally kind of bummed out when my IDEAs project was about designing a Guided User Interface (GUI) to compare to an ultrasound machine.
The past three weeks have actually been super interesting, though. I have spent numerous hours analyzing an microbubble destruction and replenishment with a Sequoia ultrasound machine. The process has actually been super interesting, and I feel like the work I have done in my independent research lab has helped me gain a stronger grasp of the material.
In regards to the actual design of the GUI, though, I have realized how much the design process we have been using in this class is applied in real life. Our team has been working with a client (Dr. Klibanov), in order to create a Matlab program that he has a need for. Since he admittedly does not have that much experience working with Matlab, we have catered the GUI to be as user-friendly as possible. We also have made adjustments that are convenient for him, compared to using the actual ultrasound machine. For example, Dr. Klibanov does not like how it is necessary to use a freehand trace in order to get a Region of Interest (ROI). In our initial prototype, the ROI was selected by drawing multiple connected line segments. This week, though, we changed it so that it was a freehand trace. Then when we met with him to show him our updated GUI, he emphasized that he preferred drawing with the line segments! Therefore, it is important to always properly identify the needs of a problem before designing something. I’m really excited to see how our final project turns out this week!
First Day 1/21/16
Hey everyone! My name is Alex Lord and I am a third year from suburban Connecticut but currently in the process of moving to Cleveland, Ohio. In my free time at UVA I am involved with the Engineering Tour Guides and am a server at Wild Wing Café. I am taking this class because I am intrigued by the clinical applications to Biomedical Engineering and really want to see how my designs can solve current health care problems. In this class I really want to improve my abilities in CAD and gain experience connecting clinical experience to design.
BME Design 