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InnovationSpace team wins grant from Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative
Each year, nearly 325,000 people in the U.S. die of an acute condition known as sudden cardiac arrest. It is the country’s leading cause of death. For victims who collapse outside of a hospital, help often arrives too late. Less than five percent survive. Those who are successfully resuscitated commonly face a grim prognosis of extensive brain damage.
A group of students in the 2008-2009 InnovationSpace program has designed a treatment system for cardiac-arrest patients that could help improve the odds.
Team Nexus was among three teams sponsored by ASU’s Flexible Display Center. The students were charged with developing product concepts that utilize flexible-display technology to increase the safety and efficacy of emergency responders.
In the course of their research into the needs of emergency medical care, the members of Team Nexus discovered growing interest in a treatment known as therapeutic hypothermia. Research has shown that brain damage is significantly reduced in cardiac-arrest patients whose body temperatures are cooled to 89.6 to 93.2 degrees F.
Patient-cooling technologies, however, are largely restricted to hospital emergency rooms. To facilitate early medical intervention, Team Nexus designed a product known as Kelvin. It provides emergency medical personnel with a comprehensive system for administering and monitoring patient cooling that is specially adapted to field conditions.
In May 2009 Kelvin won a competitive grant from ASU’s Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative. The grant provides $18,000 in seed funding, office space at the ASU SkySong Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, and a full year of business mentorship. These supportive measures will help launch the next phase of Kelvin in which the team will gather additional industry feedback, refine the product’s design and develop a testable prototype.
“As a team we feel so privileged and excited to have the opportunity to continue developing Kelvin,” says business student Josh Tong. “Cardiac arrest is something that affects many people—often people we have had the privilege to know personally. One of the most rewarding things about working on this project is seeing people’s eyes light up as we tell them about the positive effects Kelvin will have in the pre-hospital-care environment.”
Team Nexus (from left to right): Henry Braun, Engineering; Josh Tong, Business; Gabe Holland, Industrial Design; Christie Chiappetta, Visual Communication Design. (Not pictured) Stephanie Gunn, Engineering.
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