The Use of a Medical Device Surrogate for Cooperative Product Development Learning of Engineering Design

Jeffrey T La Belle is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Health and Systems Engineering and the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. He holds adjunct status in the School of Energy and Matter Transport (Mechanical Engineering) as well as the College of Medicine at Mayo Clinic. He has a Ph.D. and Masters in Biomedical Engineering from ASU and a MS and BS in Electrical Engineering from Western New England University in Springfield Massachusetts. In the La Belle Group, we are currently developing electrochemical sensors for noninvasive glucose sensing, the novelty of our design is to obtain tear fluid for tear to blood glucose correlation in a noninvasive means to increase patient compliance. The next leap in technology for diabetes care is a multiplexed sensor that will add more depth of information for a self-monitoring blood glucose devices, here five accepted markers for DM care and management, including glucose, HbA1c, among others are simultaneously monitored on a single strip sensor. This technology we are developing could also allow for continuous and single use stress/trauma sensing technologies. Other applications of the sensing technologies include small molecule, DNA, protein, and whole cell detection to address changing climate in point-of-care technologies and medicine. On the activation side of our research, we are fabricating nitinol staggered muscle arrays that mimic skeletal muscle and we have recently demonstrated over 30% compression in our SMA’s similar to muscle bundles. Our approach to design is simple, following FDA guidelines and suggestions from the start, look at what the user needs and/or wants and apply a unique solution. We have a well-diversified group to tackle the challenges in health care today, staff and students come from biomedical engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, computer science engineering, as well as biology and chemistry programs at ASU. BME at ASU teaches a 8 semester wide medical device design tract that initiates the students in design, regulations, standards, IP and other aspects from day 1. Dr. La Belle has develop and courses and taught at the freshman, junior, senior and graduate level on these topics.