Title: A method to reduce fogging in lenses of optometry patients and clinicians for improved patient care
Team: Andrew Gamaley, Catherine Tran, Sean Roh
Client: Optometry – Sowmya Ravikumar, PhD (UC Berkeley)
Respiratory PPE is incredibly important in the field of optometry as the nature of optical exams require a close distance between the provider and patient, as well as a need for a clear field of vision. Primary care optometrists use normal surgical or cloth face masks on a daily basis for their check-ups or examinations. Procedures like ophthalmoscopy require an optometrist to get close to the patient’s eye, and the face shields that the optometrists wear as PPE can interfere with the doctor’s ability to determine the health of the patient’s retina. Difficulties are encountered with current face protection equipment by people who wear glasses. Those who wear glasses experience fogging and uncomfortableness when donning protection equipment, which is a big detriment to the ability of an optometrist to properly assess a patient.
Our unmet need centers on mitigating fogging of personal glasses and binocular ophthalmoscope for optometry clinicians and patients wearing masks.
Title: Respiratory PPE for Dental Hygienists: Engineering Protection Controls for Aerosol-Generating Cleaning Procedures
Team: Edward Han, Elizabeth Wang, Mehak Sharma
Client: Dental Medicine – Beth Wilson, RDH; Rhoda Gonzales, RDH, RDHAP; Travis Trammel, RDH, RDHAP, PhD; & Becki Cole
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, most dental offices closed their doors. Since then, they have reopened with regulated procedures for PPE usage, patient screening, office capacity limits, and disinfection of operative surfaces. However, even with increased PPE standards, hygienists have a high occupational hazard of contracting COVID-19 due to their close-range interactions with unmasked patients and the aerosol-generation procedures performed in dental offices.
Our unmet need centers on addressing the risk of airborne transmission of COVID-19 caused by aerosol and splatter-generation procedures.
Title: Redesigning Facial PPE for Radiology Patients
Team: Vicky Cui, Shirley Li, Daniel Beard
Client: Radiology (MRI) – Elizabeth Pierce (UCSF)
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a commonly used medical imaging modality for soft tissue and tumor detection in the brain and spinal cord. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the current standard of care for patients inside the MRI room is to wear surgical masks. However, patients are usually asked to remove their masks before entering the machine to alleviate the breathing pathway causing patient discomfort during lengthy scans. Given the high demands for MRI imaging for diagnostics and the risks associated with having patients remove their masks before entering the machine, there lies an urgent need for redesigned protective equipment that is MRI compatible.
Our unmet need is centered on a method to reduce claustrophobic effects in MRI patients wearing
masks inside the machine in order to get them to keep their facemasks on in the MRI and still get a quality image.
Title: Establishing PPE Integrity for N95 Respirators
Team: Emily Kim, Sammy Cheung, Daniel Yang, Rajan Parikh
Client: Pulmonary Medicine – George Su, MD (UCSF)
COVID ICU nurses are constantly in a dangerous environment, exposed to all forms of diseases and ailments, trusting that their personal protective equipment (PPE) will protect them. The COVID-19 outbreak has put greater strain on the manufacturing pathways for PPE and forced hospitals to undergo unprecedented changes in protocols and PPE practices in order to combat this shortage. Although standard issue N95 respirators are only designed for single use, nurses have been saving and reusing their respirators, often for many days at a time. Currently, no formalized manner exists for nurses to determine in real-time if their respirators are failing, except the annual fit testing and seal checks. As a result, they are forced to individually monitor their masks in a non-standardized way, leading to PPE being used for far longer than is safe.
Our unmet need centers on devising a PPE product for ICU nurses that indicates PPE fit failure, enabling users to make informed decisions about when to adjust or change their PPE.
Title: Respirators in the Emergency Department: Communication Solutions to Counter Voice Attenuation while wearing PPEs
Team: Anubhav Shankar, Mitchell Wong, Chichi Chang
Client: Emergency Medicine – Neil Ray, MD & Dheeraj Duggineni, MD (U. Penn)
Every cardiopulmonary resuscitation involves a team of about seven staff frantically performing CPR, evaluating vitals, and calling for medications. Emergency department nurses and physicians have to overcome many hurdles to communicate. With the onset of the pandemic, team members must wear N95 masks and respirators to protect the wearer from aerosolized transmission. However, in the fast-paced emergency medicine department, respirators are resisting regular communication by muffling their voices. Additionally, staff must holler over the emergency department’s chaos or use makeshift solutions such as walkie talkies with inconvenient press-to-talk. These temporary fixes are time-consuming, ineffective, and cause fatigue.
Our unmet need centers on devising a method to counter the voice attenuation in respirators for emergency department resuscitation teams to improve intra-team verbal communication.
Title: COVID-19 Temperature Regulating PPE that Prevents Sweat Accumulation for Cal Athletic Trainers
Team: Tanin Barzanian, Ethan Chung, James Lo, Caroline Chen
Client: Sports Medicine – Lindsay Huston, MD & Ryan Cobb (UC Berkeley)
Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, college athletic programs across the country face significant revenue hits and heavy PPE equipment shortages that hinder their ability to keep their student athletes and staff safe and comfortable. Cal Athletics is no exception. To preserve the already low supply of PPE, trainers schedule as many indoor patient sessions in a tight sequence to reach their quota of patients for the day as quickly as they can. Due to this high-intensity schedule, trainers are susceptible to sweat accumulation within their masks. This sweat-buildup during their patient check-ups increases the moisture around the face and leads to discomfort among athletic trainers, resulting in greater likelihood of taking off the mask indoors (increasing their risk for COVID-19 exposure).
Our unmet need focuses on devising an improved means to decrease the formation of swear within masks so that athletic trainers don’t have to remove their PPE and risk exposure during patient sessions.
Title: 3D Printed Mask Frame For Regulating Internal Mask Humidity Level In high Humidity Environments
Team: Arnav Raha, Annabel Yau, Mason Sakamoto
Client: Migrant Medicine – Blake Davis (GRM)
Maramoros is a city in Mexico along the U.S-Mexico border. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has also been the location of a tent camp housing about 2000 migrants and refugees seeking asylum in the United States. Refugees are a particularly at-risk population for COVID-19 due to the rudimentar living conditions in the camp. With a year-round average temperature of 25-35 ̊C and humidity of 80-90%, one of the major challenges at the camp is enforcing mask-wearing.
Our unmet needs centers on developing a method to reduce the humidity inside a cloth mask for medical personnel working outside of a clinical setting to improve comfort under extreme environmental conditions.