Health devices

Spring 2019

Health care innovations from WSU

From 3D-printed bones to portable defibrillators, alumni and faculty of Washington State University have contributed a number of health-care innovations to the world. Check out some of the devices and new techniques below.

Read about health-care smartphone apps developed by two WSU alumni in “What’s app?”

Portable heart defibrillator

Clint Cole (’87 B.S. Comp. Sci., ’00 M.S. Elec. Engr.)

Because it required less energy, the defibrillator developed by Clint Cole and his research group could be lighter and smaller by a factor of five, making it portable—and ubiquitous.

A former paramedic, Cole is an inventor, CEO, and college instructor … » More …

Spring 2018

Smart tech in senior living communities

Roschelle “Shelly” Fritz, assistant professor at the WSU College of Nursing in Vancouver, studies how “smart-home” technology can monitor the health and safety of senior citizens from afar. She’s part of an interdisciplinary team that includes WSU engineering professor Diane Cook and WSU psychology professor Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe.

Fritz ran an innovative pilot study that deployed health sensors in five homes at senior living community Touchmark on South Hill in Spokane.

Read more about Fritz’s work with smart health sensors at WSU Vancouver in “Technology with a human touch.”

Summer 2017

Healthy innovators

A safe and sterile needle seems to be a basic idea when preventing infections. But how that needle is sterilized, especially in places where reuse is a common practice, spurred a good idea for a pair of Washington State University student entrepreneurs.

Emily Willard and Katherine Brandenstein came up with the idea of SafeShot, a lid that sterilizes a needle each time it enters the vial of medicine, as part of an entrepreneurship class. The two students started a company, won a health business contest last spring, and headed to Tanzania early this year to research how their product could be used in a real … » More …