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Nov 23, 2023

Hardware Park in Birmingham, Alabama, teaches students medical engineering

Published On: 08.30.23 | By: Samuel Stettheimer Christina Casanova Might discusses a project with students. (Samuel Stettheimer / Alabama Political Reporter) At Hardware Park, an innovation and

Published On: 08.30.23 |

By: Samuel Stettheimer

Christina Casanova Might discusses a project with students. (Samuel Stettheimer / Alabama Political Reporter)

At Hardware Park, an innovation and product development hub in Birmingham, eight area high school students recently learned to engineer and prototype medical technology in the two-week “MedTech Device Experience.”

In those two weeks, students designed two main projects while working on side passion projects. The main projects are a new crutch with a structure that eases stair use and a wrist-wearable inhaler holder usable in sports.

Hardware Park Executive Director Mark Conner and Lloyd Cooper, principal of Push Product Design, one of the founding companies housed at Hardware Park, led the experience and guided the students.

Lloyd Cooper

“Our goal has been to create the introductory experience into design and engineering that we wish we had had when we were in high school,” Cooper said. “While this program has been carefully tailored for a two-week student experience, it builds off the same best-practice models we use here at Hardware Park for our medical device clients.”

One passion project aims to design an appealing IV pole for home health care. Christina Casanova Might, the CEO of Welcomed Co, helped the students to design with a customer in mind.

Partly guided by the loss of her son at 12 years old, Might challenged the students to design an IV pole that would “bring light” to a young patient’s home and uplift spirits. One of the students, Isaiah Williams-Scott, suggested a tree design, and they ran with it. The group sketched out a plan to create a “tree” design – half furniture, half art – that also happens to hold an IV.

Hardware Park near downtown Birmingham. (Hardware Park)

“Isaiah, this is just what he thought of. And nobody in medical devices, nobody at Stryker and Medtronic have ever thought of that. Have you ever seen a tree in a hospital, you know, in the room?” Cooper said.

“It’s the best way to learn,” Cooper said. “Like, you’ve got to go build this thing, and so it frees you up. It’s very freeing.”

Given the substantial medical industry in Birmingham — the UAB system, Children’s of Alabama, Ascension St. Vincent’s and others — Conner thought talented engineering students would benefit from early experience with medical technology prototypes.

Mark Conner

“There’s no shortage of really bright people doing medical research and medical practice who would have ideas for improvements or products or new products that could come to market,” Conner said. “But there’s a big gap between ‘I’ve got an idea’ and ‘I have a prototype.’ Really, with medical devices, until you can get to that functional prototype that really demonstrates that this works, you can’t go to the next level.”

Conner was the director of engineering at Hoover High School until he retired last year. Using his educational experience, plus faculty recommendations, Conner identified talented students at schools throughout the Birmingham metro area.

“We weren’t sure, honestly. I mean that this was an experiment within an experiment, because we’re putting kids together that don’t know each other. We’ve never done this with high school students; we didn’t know what to expect,” Conner said.

“Pretty much every day, we looked at each other and said, ‘Wow.’ I mean, they’re doing this. They’re coming up with good ideas.”

A version of this story originally appeared in the Alabama Political Reporter.