VCU students design surgical table for use in developing nations

'Operation Simple'

Seule Kabir has a master's degree in mechanical engineering and a heart that's set on helping people back home in her native Bangladesh.

She found a way to match her skills with that desire through a project that Virginia Commonwealth University students have been working on for the past two years.

The students have come up with a prototype for a surgical table that would cost only $500.

The high price tag on operating tables -- they can cost $5,000 to $80,000 -- means many hospitals in developing nations can afford just one. It's a problem that not only delays treatment for patients but also raises the cost of medical care, Kabir said.

The culmination of her idea and how it evolved in the hands of two teams of students is on display Saturday through July 31 at the Science Museum of Virginia.

The project, called "Operation Simple," is the result of the collaboration of art, engineering and business students in VCU's da Vinci Center for Innovation in Product Design and Development.

It remains a work in progress. The students have taken the assignment from the classroom to the museum as they fine-tune the design and develop marketing plans.

"Every day that you come we'll be on the next step of whatever we were doing yesterday," said Michael Mercier, a mechanical engineering major who graduated last month and is working on the prototype at the museum.

The students made a surgical table -- with parts they found mostly at Lowe's -- that disassembled will fit in a 24-inch cube cardboard box for easy shipping.

That's not to say the final product will come from Lowe's. The team is investigating the possibility of establishing a start-up company to have the table manufactured in India and shipped by sea to Bangladesh.

Kabir was a biomedical major preparing to work on her master's degree when she told Russell Jamison, dean of the School of Engineering, about her hopes of finding a way to provide low-cost medical equipment to help people in Bangladesh.

"He said, 'Let's do it and not just wish for it,'" she said.

The idea to focus on a surgical table grew out of their discussions.

Kabir made a trip to Bangladesh to talk with doctors and hospital administrators before she and two other students began work in the 2008 spring semester. A second team came up with the prototype this spring.

The key to success, the students say, is making a table that can be taken apart and packed flat using the approach perfected by the Ikea home-furnishing chain. Standard surgical tables are shipped in huge crates at a cost that exceeds the $500 price ceiling that they've put on their product, Mercier said.

The cost also is kept low by relying on mass-produced parts that the students "Frankenstein" together, said Chris Johnson, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering.

To raise and lower the table, for example, the prototype uses a simple and inexpensive scissor jack "like everyone has in the back of their trunks," he said.

Coming across a kit at AutoZone was the "light-bulb moment" that helped her team realize the idea might work, Kabir said. Among other tools, the mechanic's kit contained both scissor and hydraulic jacks -- and cost just $59.

"We thought, yes, we can do it," she said. "If that can come to the U.S. for $59, a bed can go to a Third World country for $500."

Kabir's group worked on the concept for the table, and one member, interior design student Jennifer Farris, was the team leader for the project the next year.

Getting an art perspective was important to advancing the project, Kabir said.

"I see it in 2-D. They can easily visualize it in 3-D," she said.

About 10 students have worked on the project through the da Vinci Center, which draws from the schools of Engineering, Business and Art for cross-pollination of ideas.

The center's approach of being "the generator of innovation" is the right model for the 21st-century economy, Jamison said. Products such as the surgical table are increasingly envisioned and designed in this country but manufactured abroad.

Working together on projects helps foster respect of other disciplines, he said. They learn to "incorporate things they didn't know they didn't know."

Without input from business students, an engineering team might come up with a perfectly engineered surgical table that would be too heavy to ship economically, he said. Or art students might design one that's durable and beautiful but costs 10 times too much.

The teamwork helps them recognize they can be right but still fail, he said. "That's the ultimate Pyrrhic victory."

Contact Karin Kapsidelis at (804) 649-6119 or kkapsidelis@timesdispatch.com.