Designing New Tools for Diagnosing Lung Cancer
What?
At Olin College, the senior capstone in engineering program (SCOPE) involves a year-long team consulting project for a company. I was the Project Manager and User Interaction Lead for my six-person team, and we worked with Boston Scientific to design a new tool for diagnosing lung cancer.
Why?
Lung cancer is an aggressive disease with a low long-term survival rate. When physicians first find lung cancer with CT scans, their next step is to perform a bronchoscopy to take a sample so they can determine what stage the cancer is in and how best to treat it. We designed a tool to help doctors know that they sampled the correct area so that they can confidently assess whether a patient has cancer.
How?
For the first semester, we did extensive background research and came up with over 200 ideas (shown on Post-it notes). Then, we met with several physicians and used their feedback to generate more ideas. In the second semester, we chose the most promising idea and developed it further. The project continued with another SCOPE team the following year.
At Olin College, the senior capstone in engineering program (SCOPE) involves a year-long team consulting project for a company. I was the Project Manager and User Interaction Lead for my six-person team, and we worked with Boston Scientific to design a new tool for diagnosing lung cancer.
Why?
Lung cancer is an aggressive disease with a low long-term survival rate. When physicians first find lung cancer with CT scans, their next step is to perform a bronchoscopy to take a sample so they can determine what stage the cancer is in and how best to treat it. We designed a tool to help doctors know that they sampled the correct area so that they can confidently assess whether a patient has cancer.
How?
For the first semester, we did extensive background research and came up with over 200 ideas (shown on Post-it notes). Then, we met with several physicians and used their feedback to generate more ideas. In the second semester, we chose the most promising idea and developed it further. The project continued with another SCOPE team the following year.
