Medical

The National Institutes of Health, the primary medical research agency in the United States, is sponsoring a new competition for undergraduate students to design and develop innovative solutions to unmet health and clinical problems. This program, called The Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) challenge, is being organized by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) section of the NIH.

At stake are $10,000 prizes in three categories – diagnostic devices, therapeutic devices, and technology to aid underserved populations and individuals with disabilities. Competitors must be full time undergraduate students and permanent residents of the US in order to qualify. Dr. Zeynep Erim, the architect of the challenge, said that the NIBIB’s objective for the participants is “to force the boundaries of their design skills and knowledge to develop innovative biomedical technology for health care.” Hopefully the spirit of this competition inspires them to create more efficient medical procedures and equipment to meet our ever-growing health care needs.

You can visit the official DEBUT page to enter the challenge or follow along with the entries. It will be interesting to follow along with the proposals to see what new ideas these young biomedical engineers come up with. The submission deadline is May 26th, 2012, and winners will be announced on July 31st, 2012.

Read the full announcement here.

Our newest product category, Sterilization Test Equipment, features several items with different methods for determining if your lab materials have been properly sterilized. So to avoid confusion in what can be a life-or-death matter, we’ve pulled together some resources from the manufacturer of this line, 3M Health Care.

This product line can be broken down into three categories: Physical monitors, chemical indicators, and biological indicators. Because each type has its own unique advantages and disadvantages, the organizations that publish guidelines for sterilization, such as the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and AAMI (Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation), recommend a combination of these monitoring types to get a clear picture of the sterilization process.

Let’s break down each type of sterilization monitor and its pros and cons:

• Physical monitors – Includes gauges, electric readouts, etc.
  • Pros – Provides real time information.
  • Cons – Can only monitor one location at a time.
• Chemical indicators – Usually specialized inks coated onto paper, plastic or foil.
  • Pros – Provides immediate feedback; size and cost allow for multiple placements.
  • Cons – Does not indicate lethality.
• Biological indicators – Contains a large number of viable microorganisms (generally bacterial spores) that are known to resist a particular sterilization process.
  • Pros – Provides a direct indication of lethality.
  • Cons – Requires incubation before final results can be obtained.

If you’d like to learn more about sterilization monitors, you can check out our catalog, as well as this self-study series that 3M Health Care published in this month’s Healthcare Purchasing News. They even included a test you can send in to them to see how much you know about sterilization in the medical field.