I think one of the most interesting things that I have had time to do in my time here at USC is to work with a lot of my fellow classmates on group projects. In many of my classes they encourage innovation and collaboration. Last semester a group and I developed a new product, an Actionable Biosystems Brush, which tracked bacteria count in the mouth over a long period of time. This bacteria count when looked at over months and even years could be an early indicator of diseases such as heart disease. I worked on the project with Radhika as well as a business major and a computer science major. We got to pitch our project to angel investors at the end of the court and were responsible for coming up with a marketing and business plan.
This semester I am working in one of my classes BME 416: Regulation of Medical Products on another collaborative group project. This time our team is only composed of Biomedical Engineers which is an interesting dynamic change from last semester. We are currently finishing up our final project which will be a product which will accurately and efficiently administer eye drops with sterility to the users eye. The unique part of our device is that it can claim a higher efficiency rate than normal eye dropping devices because it will get rid of user errors in stability as well as blinking.
This is another invention on the market currently. I would show you ours but it is patent pending.
The great thing about this project is that each Biomedical Engineer is in charge of different aspects of the project and it has shown me how much we have really learned here in college. One of my classmates is mocking up all of the designs on solid works, another is drawing circuit diagrams, and yet another is in charge of efficacy testing and risk analysis. I am in charge of marketing, product packaging, sales and am working with a team mate on all the financial forecasts. As a team we are formatting a report which will be over 40 pages long and a presentation in order to demonstrate our ideas to industry experts on the last day of class. We will have to include intellectual property patents, trademarks, and a lot of other regulatory material.
I have had a great group to work on this project together and I can’t wait until the report is done so that we can really stand back and see how much we accomplished over the course of the semester. Really we made a whole business plan from cost analysis, risk analysis, market penetration, and sales forecasts. It has been an awesome opportunity and I am glad that I have gotten to work on innovation projects like these in my classes. If you want to read more about innovation be sure to read Alexa’s Guest Blog this week.
Best,
Brenton
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