Duke MEDx and the Pratt School of Engineering’s Medical Device Design class are soliciting proposals for innovative medical device design projects from Duke University Medical Center clinicians (physicians, nurses, or others working in a clinical setting.) If a proposal is selected for the senior Capstone Design experience, a team of four Duke undergraduate engineering students will develop, and determine design feasibility for the mechanical medical device, mobile app, or web service, subject to real-world constraints.
A subset of projects will be chosen for further design and prototyping during the Summer semester. MEDx and BME will support a budget of approximately $4,000 for supplies, prototyping, summer stipends for two design fellows to work on each project for 10 weeks, and one week of engineering faculty advising.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. Project sponsors will be notified that their ideas have been accepted as design projects at least two weeks before the start of either the Fall or Spring semester.
Within scope are electronic or mechanical medical devices, mobile apps, or web services. Out-of-scope projects would be those that require expensive constitutive components, biochemical assays, or wet lab facilities for development. In past years, these projects have led to functional prototypes for testing in the human simulation lab, the generation of intellectual property that has been licensed, and the development of diagnostic/therapeutic platforms that have entered clinical feasibility testing in Institutional Review Board-approved protocols.
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