Interdisciplinary team wins award
Recently a Vanderbilt interdisciplinary team between Otolaryngology and Mechanical Engineering won an award at the Design of Medical Devices (DMD) Conference in Minnesota.
The DMD Three-in-Five Competition is a way for researchers receive immediate feedback about their projects from leaders in medical technology research, engineering & development fields. Authors of the top ten contributed papers that describe medical devices with commercial potential give a five minute presentation composed of no more than three slides. The Judge’s Panel based their award decisions upon four factors: 1) Quality of clinical need statement (problem) 2) Technical soundness of research (solution) 3) Presentation Quality and 4) Fundability.
The device presented (oral presentation by Richard Hendrick, a ME grad student) was a novel instrument used in endonasal surgery for skull base reconstruction. This device arose from the ViSE prototyping effort in response to an RFA released approximately six months ago. This is a wonderful first outcome of the prototyping effort and others are anticipated to follow.