MIT students create new medical devices
With the recent launch of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, MIT News examines research with the potential to reshape medicine and health care through new scientific knowledge, novel treatments and products, better management of medical data, and improvements in health-care delivery. When clinicians in a Boston-area hospital wish there was a device that could meet some specific need, they have a chance to do something about it: They can add it to a wish list to be presented each fall to a class of mechanical engineering students at MIT. These budding engineers then spend a semester coming up with ideas, and eventually prototypes, to solve selected problems.Sometimes these projects, from a class called Precision Machine Design — known as 2.75 in MIT’s class-numbering system (or 2.750 for undergraduates) — actually end up becoming real products. Physicians who perceive a need for a new device can submit a two-page proposal...