SVELM Innovata
SVELM Innovata is working to prevent the development of Stage 1 pressure ulcers in high risk hospitalised patients
What drew you to the problem you are working to solve in Biodesign?
Ed: The lack of effective solutions for the problem are inadequate and that a better solution is feasible and could benefit a large number of people.
Lennon: PUs prevention is not a new problem to be identified in high risk patients. I was intrigued by the Biodesign design thinking process and seek a deeper level of understanding about PU prevention and how out team could help patients and clinicians prevent this problem.
Marcus: The scale of scope of the problem and the current methods which fail to address a multi-factorial approach to the problem.
Team SVELM (L-R) Lennon Correia, Business Mentor Carlo Bellini, Shiva Sharif, Veena Kurup, Marcus Brett.
Not pictured: Alumni Fellow, Eldin Rostom, Ed Litton
What have you learned from the Biodesign process?
Veena: To not sweat the little stuff. Although I'm usually detail oriented, I've learnt that getting a rough piece of work out there and getting feedback on how to improve on it saves you more time in the long run, rather than wasting time on perfecting the details.
Lennon: Being solution agnostic at first was extremely difficult. The Biodesign process taught me to be more disciplined and seek to understand problems before jumping to solutions.
Marcus: New method of approaching design, failing fast to improve the iterations produced in a highly structured approach: a highly effective and useful tool that can be adapted by other disciplines.
What has been your favourite thing about the Biodesign experience?
Marcus: The people, the placements and the workshops.
Ed: Hearing people bring unexpected ideas to the table.
Veena: The people. What a phenomenal bunch!
Lennon: Meeting great people and the strong sense of community. The faculty directors, mentors and guests are so passionate about what they do and I left most classes feeling inspired.
What do you want to be doing 10 years from now?
Marcus: Continuing to utilise the inter-disciplinary connections made to further develop medical technologies that operate within both the physical product and digital health fields.
Veena: I certainly hope I will be knee deep in the innovation sector, working with more inter-disciplinary teams, putting my research and (hopefully!) medical background to innovative use.
Lennon: Our team to be known for helping patients have the best quality of life using innovative and practical solutions.
What would be your advice to someone considering taking the course in 2020?
Marcus: Make sure that you have enough time and embrace the process!
Veena: Go hard or go home! What you give is what you will receive in this course - the more you give, the more you receive.
Lennon: Biodesign is not just a course to learn about developing devices and digital health solutions. It is a way to connect to like-minded individuals with a common goal and empower them with processes that with some hard work will result in a new medical device.
Express interest in the 2020 Perth Biodesign course here.
Applications are now open for our new Perth Biodesign for Digital Health course here.
Ed Litton
Ed is an intensive care specialist at Fiona Stanley Hospital and a NHMRC Research Fellow. He is on the management committee of the national clinical quality registry for intensive care in Australia, has a PhD from UWA, a masters from Uni of London and is currently enrolled in a Masters of IT at CSU.
Lennon Correia
Lennon is a Sports Physiotherapist and co-director of WA Health Group. Lennon brings to the bio design program both clinical and business skills. Lennon enjoys collaborating and sharing his experiences with others. Lennon’s career goal is to grow the scope of Physiotherapy through developing innovative ways of helping patients.
Marcus Brett
Marcus Brett trained in architecture, initially at the Architectural Association then at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, followed by the prominent London/Dublin practice, Metropolitan Workshop. Brett is currently rethinking his own design practice whilst sessional tutoring & completing a MA in Architecture.
Shiva Sharif
Shiva got her biomedical engineering bachelor degree in 2014 and is currently studying as a final year PhD student at Curtin University where she applies artificial intelligence approaches and machine learning techniques to find out gait-related disorders in early stages. Also, she is currently working as a research and development engineer at Siemens company.
Veena Kurup
Veena is currently enrolled as a PhD student at UWA. Her PhD focuses on the efficacy of two treatment options for the promotion of lung development. Veena is very interested in biomedical innovation as she believes through multidisciplinary collaboration, medical research could become far more efficient and research output could increase tremendously.