UChicago/MGH Device Innovation Lab

Outside of school, I work as a research intern at a medical device lab jointly run by Evanston Hospital/University of Chicago and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). I am designing, building, and planning to bring to market a novel inventory management and device charging system to solve a multi-million dollar issue impacting America’s major hospitals. I have created CAD designs, built complex electrical circuits, and written both front-end and back-end code to integrate the hardware components, collaborating with physician end users as I iterate on this innovative design.

Doctors use the Stryker Vocera ecosystem to communicate with each other as a team within the hospital. Each user takes a Vocera device in the morning and is instructed to return it to the charging area before leaving. The device may be charged in one of two ways - either by removing the battery or via a USB-C port. Existing solutions are both inefficient and lead to significant clutter with batteries and cables everywhere. The current charging solution is incapable of tracking who has taken and returned their devices and struggles to communicate which devices are sufficiently charged. 

I am creating a multi-device charging hub to solve these challenges. Each device is contained in a custom capsule. Each capsule has a solenoid-locked door, a magnetic position sensor, a charging cable, and a current sensor. The controller will integrate with the hospital’s RFID badge system, paired with a unique PIN code, to lock and unlock a device. It will determine when devices are charging and ready to be released based on the current passing through the device, and subsequently decide which device to give to a user. The charging hubs are expandable and can be placed next to each other for more devices.