Technology in the operation room of the future developed at the SCE
At the conference held on the Ashdod campus students presented the projects they developed over the past half-year at the SCE Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center (EIC). The projects were developed in cooperation with the Assuta Ashdod University Hospital and the Ministry of Defense. These entities met with the students and the teaching faculty to discuss the problems they encounter in their daily work, current work procedures and the professional requirements of the products they use in their work. As part of the project the students were asked to find solutions to the problems presented to them and to build a prototype model.
Dr. Asaf Peretz, head of the Internal Medicine department at Assuta Ashdod University Hospital, met with the students at the beginning of the process. He noted that, because of the patient load, one of the significant challenges in hospitals is administering medication to hospitalized patients. The students’ research findings for the project indicated this is indeed a real problem, especially in Israel where almost double the number of patients die from medication dispensing errors than from car accidents.
The students thought of creative solutions and built models of the systems they planned. One system automatically dispenses medication based on the patient’s name. The second system holds the medication cups of all the patients in the department and issues the correct cup, with the prescribed drugs, by scanning the patient’s code. Thus, when the nurse enters the physician’s details, the system automatically dispenses the prescribed medication into the cup as prescribed by the physician, eliminating identification errors.
The project at Assuta Hospital is part of the Challenge program – a unique program for engineering innovation in organizations. Additional organizations and companies also participated and the students’ projects were presented at the conference. “All projects presented at the conference arose from real problems facing industry” said Dr. Neta Kela, head of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center (EIC) at the college. “Assuta Hospital presented problems and professional requirements. Our students were asked to do all the rest – research the field, come up with a solution and build an initial model that demonstrates the applicability of the solution to the problem. Assuta Hospital representatives expressed their satisfaction from the students’ work, from the fact that they succeeded in building an active model within several months while continuing their studies towards their engineering degree. I am sure that these collaborations will produce real outcomes in the future. Our program aims to educate the students to develop solutions to challenges that emerge from the field – to think creatively and innovatively and to apply the engineering knowledge they gained to find a suitable solution. I believe that the projects presented by the students at the conference attest to their creativity and engineering abilities”.
