No better time

Moving from a bed to a wheelchair, for those who no longer have the use of their arms and legs, can be an exhausting endeavor.

A variety of lift and hoist devices can accomplish the task. Some place a patient in a sling, others use straps or vests. But these methods are time-consuming and invasive, say three Lehigh engineering students.

“When you’re in a situation like that,” says Nick Oblas, “your caretakers have to manhandle you to get you from your bed into your wheelchair.”

“It’s very demeaning to be treated like that,” says Zachary Pelli. “And a lift device can be dangerous. It can tip over.”

Oblas, Pelli and Brendan Sullivan hope to make life lighter and easier for bedridden patients while making their mark as engineering consultants.

The three students, who earned B.S. degrees in mechanical engineering in 2014, have formed a company called PSO Consulting LLC. They have spent almost a year improving the design and functionality of a “no-lift patient transfer system” invented and patented by Next Health, a Connecticut medical device supplier. And they have taken on other projects in the medical, aerospace and pharmaceutical fields.

Last month, the students, who are completing the M.S. in mechanical engineering at Lehigh, relocated their company to Philadelphia.

Now is the time, they say, to use their wits—and the engineering, laboratory and software skills they are acquiring at Lehigh—to see how they far they can go on their own.

“We see a huge market opportunity,” says Sullivan. “Plus, we’re up on 3D printing, SolidWorks [a computer-aided design and engineering software program] and all the other latest manufacturing technology that we learned to use at Lehigh.”

An eye on healthcare’s future

Pelli, Sullivan and Oblas became acquainted as sophomores. They joined the same fraternity, took the same classes, and worked on the same manufacturing and design projects in the mechanical engineering and mechanics department.

“Working together solidified the three of us and motivated us to start a company,” says Pelli. “We knew how each other worked, and we knew each of us had the work ethic we needed to make this [the company] a success.”

The students learned last October that Next Health was seeking engineering design help with its AgileLife Transfer and Mobility System (TMS). The automated system combines several assistive devices to move a patient from a hospital bed into a wheelchair and back into bed again.

The TMS transitions a patient down his bed and into his chair along a sheet that moves with him. The patient encounters no friction. The procedure takes two minutes; at the end, the chair accepts the patient and disengages from the bed. No lifting is required by caregivers.

The TMS is also equipped with sensors and a docking station. The chair has more than 200 parts, including an integrated commode. The dock has 120 parts, and the bed more than 300.

“The AgileLife is a great product,” says Sullivan. “The bed itself contains a conveyor belt and conforms to accept the patient from a rotating chair.”

“Next Health asked us to make the AgileLife better, faster and stronger,” says Pelli. “We used the knowledge we gained from our Lehigh manufacturing courses—how to take a robust design and make it more efficient. In collaboration with Next Health’s internal engineering team, we were able to add functionality—a tilt-in-space wheelchair feature—and still significantly cut production costs.

“We made the first prototype one month ago, and the design worked beautifully. The wheelchair met all end user and clinical requirements. In 10 years, I can see half the hospitals in the country can have this technology.”

A diverse set of backgrounds

To all of their endeavors, the students bring a variety of experiences from their M.S.-level research projects with faculty members and graduate students. All three are on schedule to complete the degree in December.

Oblas is working with Prof. Alparslan Oztekin to develop personal portable hydrokinetic turbines that can generate 500 watts of continuous power. Oblas is examining the structural capabilities of the turbines and the recording of data points.

“The idea is for small teams of Navy Seals to take these turbines to remote areas,” says Oblas, “and deploy them in rivers with sufficient flow to generate continuous power to keep a camp going and to do surveillance and other tasks.”

Sullivan, who earned an additional B.S. in Lehigh’s Integrated Business and Engineering (IBE) Honors Program, is working with Prof. Terry Hart ’68 on the control and coding of drones that fly without guidance from computers or humans. The autonomous machines can be used for surveillance, for delivery systems and for monitoring farms and landfills.

“We’re working with four drones to try to achieve a master-follower system in which the front drone communicates with the other drones to do surveillance,” says Sullivan. “We’re trying to optimize the flight paths and the communication between the drones.”

Pelli is helping Prof. Eugenio Schuster’s group develop a new model for thermal diffusivity in Tokamak nuclear fusion plasma reactors. The challenge is to gain an improved understanding of the conductivity of plasma confined in a magnetic field and the behavior of the plasma when it is subjected to the same pressure and temperature—100 million degrees—that exist inside the sun. The goal is to be able to manipulate the properties of the plasma and improve the quality of the reactor design.

“At those temperatures and pressure,” says Pelli, “it’s almost impossible to measure localized temperatures, which can change 10,000 degrees across 1 centimeter of plasma. This is a very complex problem. Controlling the Tokamak is one of the greatest challenges nuclear engineers face today.”

“Everything to gain”

The proprietors of PSO say they have received nothing but encouragement from their teachers at Lehigh.

“Our professors told us to be go-getters,” says Oblas, “to start a company instead of going to work for one if at all possible.”

“There’s very much a ‘just do it’ spirit at Lehigh,” says Pelli. “We were definitely encouraged to take the knowledge and skills we gained and use them in an entrepreneurial way if we could.”

The students face competition from large, established engineering consulting firms. But their size and their youth, they believe, give them an advantage.

“If a startup company in need of engineering services retains a large consulting company,” says Pelli, “they can spend several hundred dollars an hour for those services. They will sign a contract and not see the consultant for several months.

“Our intent is to consult frequently with a client and charge as we go at a much smaller hourly fee. We see a huge market opportunity, and we’re cutting out all the middle men.”

“Our goal,” says Oblas, “is to be a one-stop shop for design. You bring the idea and we will design it, prototype it, perform a stress analysis, and employ engineering and cost optimization techniques.

“The coolest thing is to see the impact we can have.”

The students are prepared for any outcome.

“This is the age of the startup,” says Sullivan. “We have everything to gain and nothing to lose. We have learned more in the last eight months working with our clients than we learned in four years of school.

“If this venture doesn’t work out, we’re still recent graduates with master’s degrees and a lot of practical experiences.”

 

Story by Kurt Pfitzer

Photograph by Christa Neu