So our needs statement is a way to reduce hospital days in patients with small bowel
obstruction, who had prior abdominal surgery.
We've done some preliminary brainstorming and have some prompts, lots of prompts to
work with, and we're gonna start looking at different embodiments of the solution and
just kind of see where that takes us.
So what did you say you wanted to start?
Maybe start with mechanical, electrical, and there were a couple of other –
Go for it.
Why don't we just spend some time on mechanical first and then when we hit a wall, then –
Okay, good idea.
So something that goes through the obstruction and changes the shape of the bowel, like untangles
it.
What about something that's inside the peritoneum and –
agitates around and breaks of adhesions.
Okay, so untangles bowels that can be from inside, but I suppose it could be –
External, also.
Yeah, and so just manipulating it.
Okay, and so breaks adhesions inside.
In other ways, how does it break it?
This could be outside, too.
It cuts it?
It could cut it?
Dissolve?
Dissolve, yeah.
Vaporize.
Heat.
Cold.
I don't know if it's okay to go back and forth.
So untangling, so magnets?
Can we have two magnetic ends so there's magnets involved?
Is it wire?
Maybe an automatic thing that's attached to the bed that's a massage type of a thing.
Could we just do like a physical therapy; maneuver the patient.
Right, and gravity seems to help the patient get better, so if you could replicate that
somehow, move them around, or I guess motion.
When we say mechanical, I have a whole another sort of area or idea of things that would
go through.
Instead of trying to break up the obstruction or untangle the bowel to get rid of what's
in there and –
So what's blocking.
If we move the blockage –
Like we just saw, that device with the _____.
Roto-Rooter.
Have some algorithm for spinning around.
It's got a gyroscope and untangles the bowel in the path of least resistance.
Yeah, gyroscope and move so that it can manipulate the bowel from the inside.
It could have algorithms that automatically do it or it could be remotely controlled.
Like Roomba, something like that.
A little bowel Roomba.
You want to try another prompt?
Yeah, let's try a different prompt.
Okay, totally different?
Oh, we were gonna do electric.
Okay, so let's go there.
Okay, so this was mechanical.
All right, electrical.
Decide?
It would fall under electrical.
Like a shock, so the bowel movement is peristalsis –
so all of that nerve.
[…] that bowel movement.
Yeah, shock is good.
And to activate the bowel, which is kind of sleepy.
The process if brainstorming, well, I think to be most effective, it's a very high energy
activity where everyone is participating and just ideas come very rapidly and you can really
build off each other and build off each other's energy.
So when the energy starts to sag and you start to lose momentum, then sometimes changing
directions renews vigor, and then a lot of times you'll find that you'll come back to
something where you got stuck earlier.
But I think it's important to just keep the energy and keep the flow going.
the first brainstorming session we did ended not because we were out of ideas but just
because we were out of time, but that was fine.
It gave us all a chance to work with the ideas that we had come up with.
The next time we came together, people said, "Here's something else I had," to get us jump
started on that next phase.