Dell Seton Medical Center’s John Uecker performs about 350 laparoscopic surgeries a year and was frustrated by constantly having to stop surgery to clean the camera lens. Cleaning the lens meant breaking concentration; removing the camera from the patient’s body; cleaning the lens of blood, fat and condensation; and re-inserting the scope and finding his position to resume the surgery.
Believing there had to be a better way, in 2016, Uecker, an associate professor of surgery, approached Chris Rylander, an associate professor in UT’s departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.
Rylander recruited then-Ph.D. candidate Chris Idelson to co-invent a solution. Rylander and Idelson were intrigued by the shape of the Slurpee straw, and after more than a year of development, Uecker began testing their prototype.