A team of six biomedical engineering students from Georgia Tech finished fourth among 19 universities at the fifth Coulter College workshop for the development of biomedical devices. The competition involved students working in teams to address an unmet clinical need. The Tech team worked together on a single project, which was to improve patient comfort and reliability in the detection of strep throat in pediatric patients.  

Coulter College is a training program for the process of translating biomedical innovations into viable products. Collegiate design teams are guided by faculty and clinical experts through a highly dynamic process that helps them better understand how to identify innovations that can meet clinical needs and then gain financial support for the product development process. 

The program was held Aug. 14-17 in Coral Gables, FL, by the Biomedical Engineering Society with support from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation. Topics covered at the workshop included intellectual property protection, regulatory strategy, reimbursement codes, and working with technology transfer offices and funding sources. On the final day of the competition, student teams pitched their ideas in a similar format to “Shark Tank.”

"Competition was a very tight competition, with fractions of a point separating them from first place.  All university teams did an excellent job, but our students clearly stood out for their professionalism, creativity, and communication skills," said James Rains, director of Capstone for BME at Georgia Tech. "At this event they essentially compress Capstone into a three-day intense experience where teams define a problem statement and then go thru all necessary steps (Design, IP, FDA, Business, etc) to take a product to market."

The Coulter College workshop was attended by a number of major American universities, including Syracuse, Columbia, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.