Team Project
Students will work on teams of 2–3 to design and build a health device prototype in one of the following tracks. The teams will be advised by expert mentors and course instructors.
- Making the Tricorder: Inspired by the Tricorder X-Prize, students will aim to create specific component technologies that integrate into a comprehensive Tricorder mechanism capable of vital signs and specific disease biomarker detection. Component areas will include optical, electric, biochemical, and molecular diagnostics.
- Construction Sets: Our approach to user-centered design relies on enabling physicians, nurses, and patients as re-inventors of devices through the use of toolkits. By relying on a modular device design that can be remixed in the field, adoption is enhanced and the innovation process decentralized. Students will learn design strategies to add construction set versatility to their projects.
- Device Ecology Strategies: The consumerization of healthcare devices requires us to leverage existing devices and everyday infrastructure. Students will learn how to take existing devices (e.g., Modified Roomba vacuum cleaners, distributed cameras to record movement, mobile phone apps) and create cooperative, sensorized systems of care that work together as a set of integrated technologies.
