Plug n play skin skin#

The experience taught her to “never underestimate what can be done in a very short time, especially when you have the right people backing you up,” she said.ĭemas, a mechanical engineering major and the project’s chief designer, said, “At first, we didn't even know there was a need for such an instrument. “I got to see an idea jump off the paper and into real dermatologists’ hands in less than four months,” said Asai, who served as principal investigator for the project's clinical study. They developed the prototype in their dorm rooms, used the Engineering School’s 3D printing facility to fabricate its ergonomic plastic parts, conducted a clinical study at Yale Dermatology Associates, and filed a provisional patent for the device. Dedicating 20-30 hours a week to the project, the three worked independently of any Yale engineering courses. Once the concept was hatched, the team jumped into action.

They wondered how the 3D visualization employed by their surgical probe could be useful to a technology that would qualify for entry to the CIMIT contest.

Hosted by the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology in Boston, the CIMIT Prize for Primary Healthcare competition encourages engineering students to develop technological innovations that have potential to enhance patient care at the initial point of contact with the healthcare system.Īsai, Demas, and Swart, who met as freshmen in Morse College and collaborated as sophomores to engineer a laparoscopic surgical probe, said the idea for a mole scanner came to them during a late-night conversation.

Plug n play skin skin#

They won the prize for their development of an early melanoma detection device called a 'Stereoscopic Plug-and-Play Dermatoscope and Web Interface.' Their small, user-friendly, low-cost camera can be used by a doctor or patient to capture and upload 3D pictures to a web-based directory that dermatologists can access to remotely analyze and monitor the topography and volume changes of skin moles. The team of Yale rising juniors beat out engineering graduate and undergraduate students from around the country to win $100,000 in a national competition to create novel technology for improved healthcare delivery. Now, with two years until graduation, the three engineering majors are business partners with a prizewinning prototype and financial backing. Then she met classmates Nick Demas and Elliot Swart, two budding entrepreneurs.

Elizabeth Asai came to Yale to prepare herself for a career in “meaningful science,” and never imagined she’d fulfill that calling in a technology startup.