Third prize ($1,000): Robopsy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Robopsy team is making an inefficient process much more efficient.

A typical lung biopsy today takes two hours to complete, with doctors using a CT scan to find a suspect mass in a patient, inserting the needle, and taking a sample. The problem is that the doctor can’t be in the room during the scan due to radiation; instead, they watch the scan through a computer monitor and then return to the room to find the right spot for the biopsy manually. As the needle is gradually inserted, the doctor and support staff continually shuttle between the radiation-shielded control room (during scanning) and the CT room (when manipulating the needle), moving the patient in and out of the CT machine again and again.

A little invention that could simplify the process is Robopsy, a lightweight, disposable, dome-shaped device that holds a biopsy needle and sits on a patient's chest during a CT scan.3 Sitting in the CT room, the doctor uses a laptop to manipulate the needle remotely, putting an end to shuffling between rooms and guesstimating where the needle should go. The team believes Robopsy will not only cut down on procedure time, but also give doctors the ability to target very small lesions (~5mm) that cannot be targeted by hand, and reduce instances of pneumothorax (partial or full lung collapse) caused by missed punctures.

The team has made good progress since winning third place in the BMEidea competition. The two main team members, MIT mechanical engineering graduate students Conor Walsh and Nevan Hanumara, have dedicated themselves full time to the project. After nailing down the design specifications, they’ve started testing the device using CT machines at Massachusetts General Hospital.

They’ve also found other sources of funding, including $5,000 from the Boeing Prize at the 2005 MIT IDEAS competition and $4,000 from the Cambridge-based Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology. In an exciting development, the team took first place in the MIT 100k Business Plan Competition, securing $30,000 for business development.

Challenges still remain, involving both the technical and business aspects of the project. Says Hanumara, “As far as the product itself goes, we’re designing a disposable robot as opposed to a more expensive, more durable one that would be retained from procedure to procedure. From one point of view it seems that designing a disposable robot is quite simple—if you’re throwing it out, why put a lot of care into the design? But we’ve discovered it’s actually much more difficult than that: you have to make sure it’s 100% reliable, just over a short period of time. So the mechanical design has been surprisingly challenging.”

For Walsh, the business end of the project has its own challenges. “We’re trying to hash out the best commercialization plan possible for the device,” he says. “We know it’s a valuable medical device that can improve patient care, but we also have to figure out the value proposition. We have to determine exactly how much time the device is going to save, and how much hospitals are willing to pay for that improvement.”

But while challenges still lie ahead, Walsh and Hanumara believe they have already benefited from taking part in the BMEidea competition. According to Walsh, the competition was “a great match for both of our interests. It’s definitely given us a platform to build on. I think the great thing about the competition is that it allowed us to gather our thoughts and put them into a coherent document. We were lucky enough to be recognized for that when we took third. And when other people see that we’ve been recognized, it makes a great stepping stone for meeting people.”

Hanumara echoes Walsh’s sentiments. “I thought that just going through the application process—just submitting to the contest—was very worthwhile. I know there were only thirty entries to BMEidea in 2006, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s because the requirements are very strict. You really need to have your ducks in a row before submitting to BMEidea. Sitting down and thinking everything through beforehand was valuable in itself.”