Category: Personal Experiences

Dolly the Sheep

Posted on by sprosser

Dolly the sheep was the first mammal to be cloned using biomedical engineering from an adult cell. This experiment took place at the Roslin Institute, at The University of Edinburgh. Professor Sir Ian Wilmut led the research team to clone a cell from a Finn Dorset Sheep, which proved to be successful when Dolly did not share the black markings that her surrogate mother had. 

This experiment created a multitude of possibilities within biology, while also raising several questions concerned with the ethics of cloning (Roslin Institute, n.d.). 

Dolly was cloned using the Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, or SCNT. For this, the nucleus of a somatic, body cell is transferred into the cytoplasm of an egg cell that has its nucleus removed. The nucleus from the somatic cell replaces the original nucleus from the egg cell to become a zygote (fertilized egg). With this method, extinct species could be resurrected, such as the wooly mammoth with an elephant surrogate (Stocum & Rogers, 2009). 

Dolly died in 2003, but she is now located in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. 

The Life of Dolly. (n.d.). Dolly the Sheep. Retrieved July 6, 2022, from https://dolly.roslin.ed.ac.uk/facts/the-life-of-dolly/index.html

Stocum, D., & Rogers, K. (2009). somatic cell nuclear transfer | Definition, Steps, Applications, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved July 6, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/science/somatic-cell-nuclear-transfer 

  

3D Printed Cannon – Christian Nightingale

Posted on by ctnight

This week, I 3D printed a cannon like the ones that are surrounding Edinburgh Castle. Specifically, this cannon was based on the Mons Meg cannon that was gifted to King James II of England in 1457. The cannon can fire a 150kg cannonball up to 2 miles. I also made a short video that shows the steps taken to 3D print the cannon!

 

 

Visiting Surgeon’s Hall Museum

Posted on by sprosser

The Surgeon’s Hall Museum in Ediburgh was an amazing experience to see how far science and technology have improved in the past few centuries. The Museum featured a history of surgery exhibition, which, as a pre-med student, was one of my most interesting endeavors on our trip. The exhibit featured tools and techniques used in surgery over the past several centuries. Prior to this trip, I gave little thought to medical products and their innovation. I visited the museum during our last week, and it was perfect timing; I had already learned so much about biomedical engineering and design during the program, which made visiting the Museum in the last week the perfect way to cap my learning. 

The tools and techniques used in the 17th century, and on, are utterly shocking to me. Surgery was performed without anesthesia, without antiseptics, and without clean tools. The Museum walked you through how surgery has evolved, from grave-robbing (which Scotland was notoriously known for) to learn the basis of human anatomy, to keyhole surgeries in the modern day. The Surgeon’s Museum was a great way to not only learn about human anatomy, but also perfect for applying biomedical engineering to healthcare. It helped me, a Biology major, learn more about how important biomedical engineering truly is for improving post-operation outcomes. I would definitely recommend visiting the museum to anyone in Edinburgh!

 

Little Blue Pill

Posted on by elcannon

For my technical module product that was related to healthcare, I chose to create an antidepressant. With mental health being such an important topic for the past several years and talking to random people on the street surveying them about their country’s mental health services, I knew I wanted to create this. Partially to help raise awareness that taking medication is okay and sometimes one person’s pathway to getting better. The other part is because my personal onshape skills have a long way to go. This was the perfect physical object related to healthcare for me to make with my current pool of skills.

I started by determining the antidepressant that I wanted to make, amitriptyline. The pill is typically blue or green and pretty small, intended for daily use. I picked my measurements in onshape, added the text to identify the amount of milligrams for my model pill, and printed it. The print was a little bit of a failure, as it was so small that the engravings did not translate well into the physical model, but that’s okay. I am proud of my pill, and that I learned how to curve edges and use different onshape functions, with a little help.

 

The not quite-a-failure, failure pictured above. Physically, the size was correct! The edges did not curve as pictured above but seeing as it was such a small print, that is understandable.

Alexia Cash -Learning Culture through Community Surveys

Posted on by akcash1

    Understanding how a countries governmental policies evolved requires and in depth look at the countries historical perspective and outlooks. In this article I discuss the realizations that community interviews gave me and how I’m applying the insight to our class and life beyond school.

    I have always had an innate sort of wanderlust that was engrained in me as a child through a healthy amount of road tripping, hiking, biking, amusement park going, etc. But COVID-19 changed my families “off the cuff” style to a mundane routine. Despite all the years of international travel, when faced with the opportunity to join this study abroad, I was extremely concerned about how it would challenge my routine life. This program challenged me is so many ways. More than anything, our group interviews challenged my view of public healthcare. A public system is not necessarily infallible, and a privatized system is not necessarily insidious in nature. Management and cultural context are key to the success of a healthcare system.

       Before I came to the UK, I though the public NHS was ideal and privatized care was extremely detrimental to all in the system except the wealthy. After conducting our interviews about the public NHS and the Netherlands healthcare system (privatized but compulsory), I realized I was lacking in my understanding. The NHS can be very inadequate when doctors don’t know how much they are spending and the system is too overwhelmed to treat people, especially with mental illness, before its too late. Additionally, the private Dutch system seems to be almost perfected despite its privatization. The difference is in management and culture. If there are adequate regulations in place, a private system can be fast, equitable, and available to everyone (such as in the Netherlands). But the Dutch and UK populations also have a cultural mindset that using the public healthcare even if they can afford a private physician contributes the greater good of the country by boosting demand and therefore investment in the system.

These interviews showed my that healthcare design is extremely dependent on the “personality” of a population. Americans subscribe to ideals of self-reliance. I see that socializing healthcare in the U.S. may not work at all if we cannot change our current cultural outlook of independence showing power and reliance showing weakness.

Here are some shots of the most impactful interviewees I talked to.

Jean Ngoie – Implementation of Engineers and Innovation in Healthcare

Posted on by mcott

In applying to this program I knew that I would learn more about healthcare systems, but I could never have predicted the visits we would take to gain that knowledge. While we went on intriguing tours like seeing the Theil Cadavers and had visits from clinicians like former ENT surgeon Rodney Mountain, I found the most impactful experience on my knowledge of healthcare to be visiting Jean Ngoie at the University of Dundee. Jean is the Head of Instrumentation & Clinical Engineering at NHS Tayside, which means that he is in charge of bringing new technologies into the healthcare system and that they are correctly implemented and are safe to use for patients. While also working directly with eth NHS, he also works with the University of Dundee biomedical engineers to give them real-life experience in the biomedical engineering field by implementing methods such as simulations and recreations of different medical wards to replicate real scenarios. 

The usage of these real scenarios is what really changed what I thought BME and healthcare education could be. With these resources, he is taking these students and making them ideal for companies right out of university. One example of the technology that he is using to train his students was the usage of a DaVinci surgical machine. A biomedical engineer may not be working directly within the DaVinci machine performing the procedure, but rather working with the machine when it needs to be fixed, calibrated, and/or adjusted in any way. This changed my perspective on what a biomedical engineer does and one way they are implemented within the healthcare system. 

On another note, in his free time, Jean Ngoie travels across the world and works with countries and areas that may not have as developed a healthcare system or infrastructure. One of his stories that really struck me was when he was in one of these areas and assisting in a surgery when the power to the ward cut out. For a minute, everyone was confused and did not know what to do, but then Ngoie took his phone flashlight and put it to the end of a fiber optic cable, therefore lighting up the surgical area. With this experience, he came back to Dundee and had one of his students work on a project creating a light source for areas that may not always have electricity or power at all times. This made me think of where innovation is founded, and the vast array of needs that form the basis of ideation. Seeing how the field of biomedical engineering is being used in real life from someone with firsthand experience changed my viewpoints on engineers within healthcare systems, and the basis of ideation and innovation for novel products and devices.