[MUSIC PLAYING]
 
Stanford University.
 
Frugality is embedded
in an Indian's mindset.
The resources are
so constrained--
are so limited that you have
to go down the frugal route.
The natural flavor
in us, it came out.
And it came out in the form of
a Popsicle stick and spring.
The Stanford-India
Biodesign program
is a collaborative effort
from the US government
and Indian government to double
up science and technology
in both these countries.
 
You start with a problem.
You first make sure
there is a problem.
And if that is solved, that
will generate some revenue.
And that will be
accepted in market.
 
You go into a
clinical environment--
it could be an operating room;
it could be the clinics--
and observe the physicians.
If a physician does a
procedure twice over
or he struggles with
a certain procedure,
that's an unmet need.
And finally, you choose your
top need and top concept.
And then you start
prototyping solutions.
Our need took shape when we
saw a pacemaker implantation.
The physician struggled
to put the pacemaker lead
into the heart muscle.
The need was a reliable way to
detect the mechanical anchorage
of pacemaker leads in patients
with pacemaker insertions
in order to reduce the
number of lead dislodgements.
When we saw that, we
feel like, oh my God.
See, this is a mechanic process.
This is like hitting
a nail onto a wall.
If we can somehow measure the
force that the physician is
exerting in the
process of screwing
the lead inside
the myocardium, it
will give him a feedback of
how well the lead was anchored.
And to solve that, we used a
spring and two Popsicle sticks.
So used these Popsicle sticks
and the spring in the middle,
attached it to the
fixation tool, which
is used to screw up the lead.
We had a scale, which measures
the compression of the spring.
And at a particular value
or a range of values,
it shows that the screw has
gone out into the myocardium.
 
When we did an analysis
of actually manufacturing
the product, even
if it wouldn't be
a very large-scale
manufacturing,
it would be still less than $10.
The issue at hand
was really big.
That specific need had
a huge complication.
But to solve it,
you may not need
those high tech
electronic gadgets
or the next generation
of algorithms.
 
For more, please visit
us at stanford.edu.
 
