Penn State National Science Foundation Center for Health Organization Transformation
(Penn State CHOT) - An Industry-University Cooperative Research Center
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Penn State faculty members across several colleges and campuses, along with government agencies, participated in the 2018 industryXchange workshop at the Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center on May 14.
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Penn State College of Engineering and Penn State College of Medicine hosted the second annual industryXchange workshop in State College
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Focusing on the theme of Enhancing Health, Penn State College of Engineering and Penn State College of Medicine hosted the second annual industryXchange workshop in State College on May 14.
This year's event was expanded to include faculty across colleges and campuses within Penn State. Government agencies were also invited to explore joint proposal submission opportunities with industry.
The event consisted of several afternoon sessions on various topics. More information about the afternoon sessions can be found here. |
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2018 Spring Research Accomplishments from CHOT Scholars
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Scott Tucker - Pediatric bone tumor treatment
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Due to the limitation of available implant hardware, current standards of care for pediatric orthopedic oncology reconstruction following bone resection often remove nearby articular joints. Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, enables rapid, cost-effective production of custom implants that can be designed with porous features unattainable with traditional manufacturing methods.
Furthermore, 3D printed constructs can be articular-sparing to preserve native, healthy anatomy. Novel articular and growth plate-sparing implant designs were developed as alternatives to joint sacrificing endoprosthetic reconstruction following tumor resection. The implants combine a non-stochastic lattice structure to fill the region of resected bone, a stem for stabilization and fixation, and a boss for screw fixation to the spared articular surface. Three unique custom implants have been designed for different applications in joint-sparing tumor removal surgery in different anatomical regions.
Custom implant design, taking advantage of unique capabilities of 3D printing, can match defect geometry, improve implant fixation, and provide porous scaffolds that enable bone integration while supporting physiological loads and restoring function. The resulting designs are being 3D printed out of titanium and their integrity will be assessed through mechanical testing at Penn State College of Medicine.
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Xiao Yang - The Screenomics project
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This month, Nilam Ram and Xiao Yang traveled to San Francisco, California to participate in the Association for Psychological Science Annual Meeting, where Yang presented "Switches of digital-mediated behavior: Screenshots to switches," using non-parametric time-series methods and machine learning to predict switches of behavior on a smartphone. Ram also
presented at the Stanford University Screenomics Summit, where he discussed with researchers the parallels between analysis of the screenome and the microbiome.
The publication from Reeves, B., Ram, N., Robinson, T., Cummings, J., Giles, L., Pan, J., Chiatti, Cho, M., Roehrick, K., Yang, X., Gagneja, A., Brinberg, M., Muise, D., Lu, Y., Fitzgerald, A., & Yeykelis, L, titled "Screenomics: a framework to capture and analyze personal life experiences and the ways that technology shapes them," is currently under review.
A new software that presents a hybrid method of time-series modeling and impulse response analysis has been developed. The hybrid method provides a multivariate intraindividual variability metric (iRAM) for a given multivariate time-series. This metric indicates variable-to-variable influence via the inferred dynamic network. More information about the developed software can be found here. |
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Thanh Lee - Electronic health record (EHR) for monitoring and detecting conditions such as diabetes
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Electronic health records (EHR) demonstrated great potential for monitoring and detecting certain conditions such as diabetes. However, the vast amount and high dimensionality of the dataset often prove to be prohibitive for EHR-based phenotyping. Previous studies often used subsets of all the information in the record system or only assessed risks of patients when specific clinical test results were available. An additional layer of difficulty is the manner in which patients' data are collected: patients' clinical measures are ascertained at different time intervals, and many different clinical results are not measured in all patients (see illustrative figure above).
Thanh proposed a longitudinal phenotyping model which treats individual longitudinal clinical variables as separate input modality and models their dependencies by imposing a hierarchical structure over the inputs. He applied his model to phenotype diabetic patients with a multitude of complications and intended to expand its application to other common clinical phenotypes.
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2018 Spring Research Accomplishments from Undergraduate Student Researchers
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Fariha Azhar - Experimental characterization of the ablation zone of a deployable RFA probe
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The goal of this research project is to experimentally characterize the size and shape of the ablation zone produced by a deployable radiofrequency ablation tool. The motivation for this project was derived from the fact that pancreatic cancer is an extremely deadly form of cancer and is estimated to take 44,330 lives by the end of 2018. Working in collaboration with Actuated Medical Instruments, Fariha was able to conduct multiple runs of experiments using a radiofrequency ablation generator and a thermochromic material that changes color in response to heat. The results from these experiments can be used to gain more precise control over the ablation zone in order to effectively treat pancreatic cancer.
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Lindsey Mitchell - Endoscopic ultrasound fine needle aspiration
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| Lindsey's research focused on finding the most effective way to aspirate viscous fluid during the Endoscopic Ultrasound Fine Needle Aspiration procedure. She conducted trials using a mock cystic fluid and conducted tests that measured how long it took to aspirate 3mL of fluid. She manipulated variables such as suction and needle diameter and observed the effects these changes had on flow rate. She analyzed these results using the Hagen-Poiseuille equation which related variables including pressure, diameter, viscosity and length to flow rate. This equation explained why an increase in pressure and diameter led to an increase in flow rate. This summer, she will be conducting more trials to see how vibration effects this equation and flow rate and ultimately submit an abstract to the American College of Gastroenterology. |
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The 2018/2019 CHOT scholars will be announced in our June newsletter.
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