Posted: October 21, 2015, 11:00am
Last Monday, twenty other USC students and I woke up before dawn to visit the emergency room at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. All of us are part of a relatively new group called Health, Technology, and Engineering (HTE@USC), which is a program that encourages interaction and collaboration between engineering and medical students. Lasting the duration of one’s PhD or MD graduate studies, HTE trains motivated students to be successful innovators in the healthcare industry.
This particular trip to CHLA was to connect us with current medical professionals and find specific needs within the hospital. Interacting with emergency room registered nurses and patient care service aids exposed us to their everyday struggles and provided us with many ideas that we can more closely examine and pursue. The issues that were discussed ranged from difficulties transporting patients with certain limitations, to struggles reading the various icons displayed on machines and monitors, to troubles flushing foreign bodies out of ears. Although at first glance, these needs seem easy to solve, all of us need to remember to take a step back from thinking about solutions and focus our attention on learning more about the fundamental problems and begin screening ideas.
For anybody interested in learning more about HTE@USC contact one of the program directors, George Tolomiczenko at HTE@usc.edu. For engineering graduate students, this is a great way to meet medical students and learn more about bringing a medical product/process to market!
Published on July 27th, 2017
Last updated on March 22nd, 2021